Warp Drive

[ALMITY]

I didnt see this already in the suggestions forum, but if I've somehow missed it I apologize,

Just one suggestion, the addition of a new mechanic and block to the game, the warp engine. No. i don't mean some Star Wars rip-off. Ever play minecraft on a bukkit server running essentials? Remember the "/warp" command? How it could warp to user set destinations and request teleport to players? Why not do something like that? Like have a warp engine block that requires somewhat of a minimal requirment like maybe a minimal of blocks based on ship weight or something, but allows you to open the warp drive GUI where you can either warp to destinations you've previously discovered and set a warp coordinates waypoint or request a warp (teleport) to another player or maybe if your in the same faction you don't need to request. something like that. I know what your thinking, "Well theres multiple teleport commands I can use..." but thats just it. It's still a command. Teleporting is in some form of command in every game. What if it was built in to the game? Maybe with some sort of cool animation for ships that are warping or something. Anyone on the same page? Still, it's just a suggestion...

Sorry if my spelling is off. I was never any good at spelling or phonics...

 

[MrNo]

This idea has been thrown around a bit: Instantaneous travel between sectors, in some form or another.

I think this could be feasible. It would be interesting to see some sort of \"warp beacon\", a block which could be stacked with itself to be more effective.

Immediate thoughts of how this would work: Adjacent warp beacon blocks would add some value to each other, which would act as a calculation of range which can be warped. The warp cost is some amount of energy, and the number of blocks in the ship per 100m (as a rough example). The energy requirement would probably need to be large, making it expensive to use. Once in place, it could be able to warp to any warp beacon within the radius.

This is a basic idea that I just wrote down off the top of my head.

 

[whogivesa]

Love the idea, it would make exploring much easier and you would not have the fear of not being able to find something you saw.

 

[deadmeat88]

Ya i would really like the access to warp travel it would make exploration a lot easier. I\'m thinking that if there was a block of it it would have to cost a decent amount because you could just jump out of combat.

Anyways really like the idea and hope it gets in.

 

[Promethean]

I think it should require a cooldown of some kind, maybe a certain ammount of power stored up as well. Maybe some calulation time as well. Wouldn\'t mind it being a Star Wars or Star Trek ripoff either, would love that infact. Especially if it had travel time, maybe 1 second for every 1000km. Also the creation of warp gates would be neat. The bonus would be that they are instantanious, but of course would require setup on both sides.

 

[Insanity Ape]

That could be something, the Warp Engine is a cool idea, it\'s rather boring flying through space not really knowing where you\'re going and if you are going to find something cool or just flying into pirates (Happens a lot). This would help me out a LOT cause I made an abandoned station my home but pirates always seem to find me, I undock and I fly off to fend off the pirates but there are times where I go too far and I can\'t find my base anymore. This would really help me out finding my home again, the warp engine could be its own little station where you can dock your ship no matter how big it is. You can go into the small station to find the controls, type down the cords or look for cords in a little cool mini-map that appears, go back into your ship where a new icon appears that says \"WARP\" click on it, have a small animation of your ship fly super fast (you know like in the movies where the stars are passing by the ship really fast) and when the animation is over you\'ll be at your destination.

 

[Zedman5000]

One problem. This would obviously have some massive power costs (so that you can\'t just warp straight into or out of heavy combat where power would be needed/used before you could warp), probably much higher than 20k energy units (so that you actually need some storage so that fighters can\'t warp because that would be stupid) and, unfortunately, power storage blocks don\'t give nearly enough effect to be worth using, so this would have to be post-buff (if there ever will be, which i hope there will).

 

[Danzarlo]

Your wrong small amout of batteries suck ass but they increas a hell of alot once you make them bigger and bigger

 

[Kowalski]

Well, some sort of warp drive for ships would be good because its booooorrriiiiinnngggg to fly trough sectors at constant 50km/h, and fly for minutes just to reach your base.



Some dicussions ive seen about it here:

\"but you could just warp out of combat!\"

yes, but you would have to lower your shields, kinda like in star trek.



\"it would cost a crapton of energy!!\"

that would make carriers useful again.



\"it would make normal travel useless!\"

nope. you could make it FTL, so you cant turn, or shoot while in FTL.



overall, the idea needs improvement, such as a \"warp core\" block that needs fuel, such as antideuterium and deuterium, managed by something like dilithium.



im a total trekkie, is it noticable?

 

[RACTA]

Indeed. It\'s gonna be hard to balance it but worth it.

 

[MrNo]

I added thoughts on this subject to another thread, I\'ll summarize them back here:

• Warp Block: The more you have next to each other, the more \"warp capacity\" you have
  
  Warp capacity works as such: The number of blocks on a ship, and the distance travel, determine the required capacity. If it exceeds the current capacity, the jump can\'t happen

[*]Warping will warp to another warp block within the range determined by the capcity (chosen from a list, or perhaps you have to know the sector).
[*]On warp, uses a huge amount of energy.


Mostly, I designed this based on organized movement from one populated sector to another. This would hardly benefit exploration, unless you carried a huge number of the beacons with you.



It is my belief that this game is partially about exploration, and that taking 20 minutes to explore the surrounding region shouldn\'t be a problem. If you have trouble getting back home, you could just write down the sector, and use the waypoint system under \"N\" to get back.

 

[danjal]

Adding in \"warp blocks\" sounds like a good idea - Essentially if you create warp gates this limits the size of the ships you can move, and if you make it require power aswell it will limit the amount of ships or the speed at which you can send ships through.

It would also make it so that you can only warp between 2 pre-set points and only with ships small enough to fit through (unless you\'d make a gigantic warp gate with loads of power)

Each gate should also be connected to a SINGLE other gate. Perhaps add the requirement of fuel to supply power to further reward exploration and exploitation of the environment.

 

[Lewshizz]

I say we make it more like GoF where the cylindrical gates warp you through and then a special drive allows you to do the same but Very Very Very expensive.

 

[Darkatus]

Definetlyy Agree. Probably should be a block that brings up a UI and warps you and your ship to the sector... of course with collision controls to prevent you from warping into a planet. How about 1 Billion credits for the block? The block is OP and to balance, a pirate station contains that much money... if not more.

 

[problemlow]

No just no you cant make pirate stations contain that much money if you get a small ship and fly into the middle of one none of the turrets can get. Another thing is it\'s already so easy to get money in starmade if i join a server I can get 2 billion credits in like an hour so there is no need to increase the ammount of money in pirate stations at all.

Btw I would love a warp drive in starmade. I tried to code one my self but it\'s way out of my league so if someone else could do it for me I would be so happy ! ! !

 

[DeadMeerkat]

How could you not of seen this in the suggestions? it gets thrown around atleast 10 times a day.

 

[Gnoccy]

I like your ideas. I think this shouldn\'t be possilbe for single players, but only for factions.

I\'m imagining even a faction having only a few jumpbeacons at their Stations and really large Carriers to jump to them. That would alsoadd a use for large Carriers and i would love to see them.

If you just fly around with your little Ship on your own you should have to travel by normal speed or with maybe some kind of faster ftldrive (isn\'t something like that planed anyway?).

And for the Navigation: I think there should be some kind of \"Favorite list\" for locations. If you are at a location, you could add this location to your favorites and give it a name. Later you can pick it out of a list and activate it. Then the direction is displayed as a diamond on the screen, no matter who far it is away.



I hope this is understandable, my english is bad. Sorry for that

 

[Zyrr]

Title.

 

[KuramaFox]

Basically, you would add a new block type to the game. The warp core block, or the jump drive block. Depends what you want to call it. Could even be something else. You may need to add a second \"control\" block for it, depending on what works best with the game code. Either way, the mechanics:



When jumping, a ship takes some time to charge up the core before it jumps. This charge time caps at 1 minute, but can be as low as a few seconds on a smaller, specially designed vessel. During this charge time, shields, engines, and weapons become disabled, and you cannot turn. This prevents someone from using it to run from combat unless they don\'t mind taking hits. The jump is an instantaneous teleport, and the server must quickly verify there is proper room at the destination (if not, it alters the destination by a bit to an area that is empty).



Now for the number mechanics.

The greater the ship\'s mass, the longer the charge time. This does not incurr diminishing returns, but as said it caps at one minute. It can, however, increase more slowly the closer to one minute you get (so as to avoid the largest ships always getting stuck at one minute).

The more jump drive blocks you have put together, the shorter the charge time. This DOES have diminishing returns, so you need a much bigger jump drive to make a large ship jump quickly then you do to make a small ship jump quickly.

The more jump drive blocks you have put together, the longer range your jump can cover. This does NOT have diminishing returns, and is not affected by vessel size either. So larger jump drives/warp cores/whatever will always have longer range.

By extension, this means larger ships will have longer jump ranges, making it viable to build a specially designed jump-ship or \"hyper space ring\" for docking smaller vessels to when you want to transport them long distances.



What this essentially gives is this. It first gives a more rapid movement ability that can be used freely, but which cannot be abused for combat purposes except by the very smallest of ships. Said rapid movement is not unlimited though, and may only be a couple sectors on a fighter-sized ship, meaning a larger ship is necessary for easy longer distance travel. This in turn gives importance to larger ships, particularly for people traveling together for one reason or another, who may wish to dock together while in transit.

 

[Gingernut23]

if it is going to be added when it would be destroy\'d would it do damage to the ship or not while it disable the ship for a while while it cause a nucler meltdown when going thouth warp could you hit things? could other people warping catch up to you? then blast you outta the universe like in star trek into darkness when there getting killed by another fediration vessel we need to think about these things