Warp, Gates, and FTL: the merits of each

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I would really like to have multiple forms of travel if possible. I really like the idea of gates and hyper space. An addition to hyper space would be hyper space inhibitors. These would be station only and consume lots of power. They would effectively stop hyper space travel in and around the surrounding sectors. This would stop war fleets from being able to travel in hyper space directly up to a target of opportunity. Large factions could also strategically place stations with inhibitors to restrict travel in a wider area. Gates could be the primary from of travel between these restricted zones. Defending gates could also be of strategic importance in PVP wars as enemies could use them to travel to your factions home world.

So hyper space for easy travel in un-developed Galaxy and gates to jump between developed areas. With this I would enjoy seeing the universe spread out too, not feel so cluttered as you could have a fast travel system to helps span the distances.

 

[Ithirahad]

Holy crap, that actually sounds like a really awesome idea. The name sounds odd though... \"Warp Inhibitors\" would probably be better.

 

[Captain Siscold]

Personally, I like the warp gate idea the most, though I wouldn\'t mind having multiple high-speed travel methods implemented. What I was thinking would be to make the warp gates like shops; they spawn randomly throughout the universe. Of course, you would probably want to make them rarer than shops. Also, make them have varying sizes, making some more valuable than others (i.e. only 10% of all warp gates can carry ships larger than X mass). Honestly, I\'m not sure whether its better to have them only connect to other gates or to let you choose where to go, within a certain range limit. I\'d lean towards anywhere within a certain number of sectors.

I think that this would actually encourage social interactions, mainly because the fact that you wouldn\'t be able to build them yourself forces you to seek out the nearest gate that you can travel through. It would also lead to factions fighting over control of the largest gates, as the one that controls access to the gate has a huge tactical advantage over all the other factions. It might also make smaller ships more useful than they are now, as a small ship would be able to use more gates than a large ship.

Anyway, just my two cents. Any other ideas?

 

[JKF1209]

I think that Warp Gates should work exactly the same as docking, it could even be a block you add to a dock.

You would dock to it and it would bring up a list of all docks large enough to accept your ship. It would require power from both the sending and recieving structure based on the mass of your ship, say 2000e/mass. It could also require power based on the distance traveled. If it is attached to a factioned structure, it would require permission from the reciever to go through. Server admins could set up public Warps. I think this would be the easiest implementation.

 

[aezens]

on word: Freelancer! (best travelling system ever)

boost: enhanced speed for a short time

hyperdrive: low- mid speed but have to be charged and its interruptable

tradelines: mid-fast speed and need to be build by players like a higthway

gates/singularity: for huge distances

 

[CaptainLoch]

ok so X3 is a lot like this game in many ways except you can\'t build your own things and there are other species/interactions it has a couple of jump things it has A warpdrive that shows a pretty cool animation and it has jumpgates as some ships can\'t hold the jumpdrive as it\'s too big. and it takes energy cells to operate but in another universe/Terran space Earth people they only have jump gates so that enemies won\'t be able to invade them by just jumping next to Earth. So I think that we shouldn\'t be able to jump next to like faction homebases or factioned stations/planets if they put up like a jumpgate system that makes them inaccesible by jumpdrive and the factions have the choice of putting them up or not and also add the jumpdrive for just like open space travel to shops but make it so that if you\'re in combat it takes longer to charge up the jumpdrive and if you fire it cancels the jumpdrives charging up like in Battlestar Galactica online.

 

[Winterhome]

Cowboy Bebop/Freelancer style gates.

The gates are not just an entrance and an exit. They need extra rings between to prevent it from ldestabilizing or, in the case of CB, dumping those ships permanently into hyperspace.

The lanes would utilize a special line type block which produces a laser that stretches for a certain distance in the editor. It makes a complete connection upon striking a second one. Place four in a square on both ends of the lane, with power supplies, and you get a cuboid space which moves ships at absurd speeds.
One way only. Want to go back? Make a second one.

Add a cruise engine as well, as a second type of thruster block requiring a computer. More cruise TWR = more speed.

Both would have an option for server owners to set speeds.

 

[Koma]

first server with working warpgates
sun-world.at:4242

 

[NeonSturm]

first server with working

first server with working warpgates
sun-world.at:4242


I miss something.

• If you warp, you are placed randomly in the destination sector.
• The sector has to be emty from stations (except the station or !planet! you build your gate on)
• There is description for what exactly you need portal water - it would be nice if bigger ships require bigger gates.
• Finally someone has to say it: portal-water is ugly - replace it with blue transparent lava!

We could have multiple FTL-technologies:

Jump Gates:

• You could have a cockpit/camera on the other gate to let other players look where they are going to - offcourse you can fake it by connecting cameras to a similar gate next to the real one, but that requires afford, and it should always be dangerous to use other people\'s gates
• we need something that may let you take the risk - different shops (fabrik stations and trade stations) like in \"X3 - Reunion\"?
• and maybe offer traps where the turrets only disable the enemy\'s ship\'s weapons? Are insanely shielded and use flex doors to allow you access.
• Some kind of \"trading guild\" could spawn equal/similar/standardized and trusted gates.
• Jump Gates could require the ship to enter some enclosed room inbetween 2 areas with blocks like \"deactivated plex-doors\" of equal shape. The destination should have all touched blocks too.

Slipstream:

• only between stars or planets (Similar to Andromeda) and only player ships can use it. Each Slip-Stream has it\'s own speed multiplier or value.

Warp:

• Just remove the speed limit and add a warp-speed limit after which speed decays a lot faster and maybe a bit exponentially, like the air resistance increases beyond Mach 1 by *3.
• Add a modifier button to it and make it a bit less OP by increasing the void between systems.
• the ships energy shields and power systems deplete at (% of your speed decay) * charge-level. You drop out of warp with an if you store less shield or energy than required for 3 seconds of warp - disable thrust until you have 3 seconds again.

To Slipstream and Warp:

• Make asteroids and other ships (or your ship to others) appear like a dust sphere, stars as a light sphere + distortion and planets as some kind of dust sphere + distortion.
• Interrupt warp before impact on a sub-warp object (maybe add warp dampeners to protect your station)
• Prevent ships re-spawning in normal space within each other (they boxes and a bubble around this box can not touch.

 

[PseudoGold]

One idea I came up with for a high-speed travel system was involved having to plug in all necessary information. Here\'s how it would work:

• Step 1: Purchase a warp computer (for lack of a better name) and a warp drive, then install them into your ship like any other system. the more drives and power cores you have, the further you can go in one warp.
• Step 2: Go to the warp computer and activate it.
• Step 3: Enter in the distance you wish to travel. This brings about certain risks such as warping inside something (resulting in the destruction of a fair amount of your ship) or in front of a group of pirates. However, you can get somewhere perfectly fine if you warp into empty space.

This would bring a bit of risk into travelling somewhere quickly, but you could place warp beacons that locate a safe place for you to warp to, and this can be faction adjusted (or tampered with by another faction).

Power would also play a big part in this type of system. Here\'s a small equation.

P= s x A2

Basically, the power needed is the distance multiplied by the amount of blocks on your ship squared.

 

[jzimmerman4]

I would like to see the combination of FTL and worm holes. I really like the simplicity and how worm holes are randomly generated, I believe it will add a lot to the game. Now the reason FTL would be needed is so that players can go to a desired location. To answer some of your proposed questions: jumps should have a few second startup where it drains all of your power and then a few second cool down while your power regenerates. Since all power drain would take the same amount of time per power, larger ships will have a longer jump startup and cool down than small fighters. Also, if you try traveling through a planet, your ship should receive serious damage as to deter super long range jumps. I also think that FTL jumps should require a module so that a ship can\'t jump once it\'s module is destroyed.

 

[ltmauve]

I favor beacons and a jump drive.

Beacons are only player created, none exsist naturally. In order to jump to a beacon, a player must have visited it in the ship they want to jump with.

Ships have a chargeup time and cooldown time. During the chargeup time, the jump drive drains energy based on the mass of the ship and the ratio of ship mass to drive mass (lower ratio means lower charge time) The cooldown time is based soley on the mass/drive ratio. During cooldown, weapons cannot be used.

This means exploration still requires sitting down with the w key pressed but when returning home you only need to let the FTL drive charge.

 

[der_scheme]

Personally, I\'d like to see Star Wars-like Hyperspace travel. Short outline how this worked:

1. You tell your navigational computer where you want to travel (you need a star map to do that).
2. The computer takes a few seconds (about 15-30) to compute your Hyperspace route. While it does that, your ship remains fully functional.
3. The computer tells you your entry vector. You follow that path and enter Hyperspace.
4. Your ship automatically follows the computed path. Travelling in Hyperspace takes time. In theory you are able to walk around the ship and do what you want, but that\'s probably not practical in StarMade (and leaves a LOT of unanswered implementational questions).
5. Your ship automatically exits at the target coordinates.

Now how I imagine how this would be done in StarMade:

1. Star maps would be an extension of the current navigation system. You could only Hyperspace travel to waypoints that where marked as travel destinations. Those destination points could be exported to/imported from star map items (allowing propagation of Hyperspace destinations to other players). Admins could restrict the creation of Hyperspace destinations (so that not everyone would be able to create those destinations everywhere, if not wanted to) and the exportation.
2. Goes without saying.
3. Maybe there will appear a marker somewhere or you just have to fly to the nearest sector marker or something like that. Just a point you would have to fly to. When near the coordinates, you would fire the Hyperdrive Computer (or something like) that, causing the ship to enter Hyperspace.
4. -
5. If the exit space is occupied by something else, automatically choose a free spot in the area

Edit: Somehow I managed to submit an incomplete post. Updated.

 

[Zelos]

How the Gates on Sun-world.at work:

You have to build 2 Gates, Source and Target. You can travel between this 2 Gates.

The Gate Activation: (was a big Problem)

Method A: fly near or into the Gate, if the Ship starts with lagging (2 Objects near by) then the warp is initiated.

Method B: fly near the Gate (same Sector) an type warp



Gate Rules:

-) Gates have a 30 sec cooldown time
-) Gates connected by Names (GATE__A and GATE__B) (Database Entity names are Unique, so gatecapturing is not possible)



The Transfere:

If you fly to a Gate you will be Warped to the target Sector and to the same position within the Sector. So its recomended that you place the Gates at the same position within the Sector to get the best effects!

at the Moment we have about 55 Active Gates.



This implementationis only Server Side and Out of the Box, so no Javacode change was needed !!

 

[StellarAmbition]

One of the coolest warp gates that I\'ve come across is Mass Effect\'s Mass relays. They work just like a catapult system. They only work in pair of two, an origin and a destination, and are used to jump between solar systems.I believe Starmade\'s solar systems are made of 16x16x16 sectors with a sun located in 8,8,8 so maybe put one gate somewhere around the sun. Here is a .gif of the jump.

 

[Kenoix]

Warp gates imo are the best option and going to make the game more fun, cause you have to build it. not just place a warp drive or ftl drive on your ship somewhere...



It should have a box form around it, like docking does(this would solve the collision after going through, aslong as this box cant have anything built inside of it-or leave it the same as normal docking. if something is inside its box, it wont work) because if it was just a hole and if your ship fits.... lol well, people will just make worm ships that are 40x40 or so and 1\'000 long and theyd fit into most gates people build. So make the rings like enhancers for the \"gate core\" and itll need massive amounts of power mass x distance(so 10\'000 mass ship going over 2 sectors is 2\'000\'000 traveled, making it about 100 energy per mass each sector) sounds fair, easier to travel with smaller ships and it wont spam mother ships :D



Also, faction based isnt a bad idea. but maybe limit each faction to only being able to build 4 or 6 of these? so 1 faction cant conquer the entire universe. and 2 gates are connected, makes it easier then having some sort of dialing system like Stargate with there DHD to connect more then 1 portal to each.



For the connection of gates, perhaps you build 1 gate to the prefered size. Then when you get to desired location, drop the gate core(or w.e itll be) and when you connect it to the other one, itll have to a drop down list or info somewhere saying the that portal MUST be this dimension(which will be exactly the same size as the gate you previously built.



just my 2 cents.

Hope it makes sense :P hard to detail my thoughts on magic gates that let things travel through :D

 

[TheDarkOne05]

To make it harder to send large things and also account for length, just charge a small energy cost per block.

Also, why not make portals rooms instead of gates? You have to build each room to the required size, and when activated, everything in each room switches spots (thus avoiding ships teleporting into each other). To let things in, it might be useful to have clear portal blocks that you can pass through, with solid ones being required to define the edges. As you want to move larger and larger things, you require more and more blocks to make the warp station.

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

If we ever get something like that, I think warp would be the best to go. And if you warped into a planet or another ship, one od two things would happen.

A: You die with no trase of your ship or your crew.

I like that one. It would add a new danger to putting in random numbers and going.

B: You are teleported in a random place within four sectors, maybe.

A bit more realistic, since warp drives shouldn\'t be that accurate, but what\'s the fun in that?

I can hear Garrus yelling at me in my head.

\"Commander, that would make warp drives way to overpowered for the game!\"

Which I\'d respond

\"Shut up and go calibrate the weapons systems. And fix your face.\"

Then I\'d think of ways to nerf it. And oh? What\'s this? A list of things to nerf warp drives? I think so. Prepare your brainus.

1. You need enough power.

There are two ways of doing this:

A: Making the power generation needed directly proportional to blocks being warped, much like cloak and jammer systems.

B: Having a massive set amount of energy required (which would be proportional to blocks being teleported) before you can actually warp.

I, personally, would prefer the latter, since you can warp any size ship, as long as you wait. It would be handy when you realize that your light fighter is not going to take down three corvette-sized pirate ships with cruiser shields, and you need to get out relatively fast. However, it also nerfs your fighter since you\'ll still have to be doing evasive manouvers while waiting for your warp drive to charge.

2. You would be able to pursue them if they warped.

This can be done in two ways:

A: Leaving the artificial warp gate open for a few seconds, which would make any tactical use of the warp drive useless. WHICH SUCKS.

B:Adding Interdiction Fields, similar to those in EVE or Distant Worlds: Shadows.

Interdiction Fields will be used to prevent warping. They can be turned on, like cloak, and the size and strength of the field will depend on the amount of Interdiction Field Generators are on your ship. (similar to shields.) You would be able to adjust the size and strength of the field using a system similar to the one you use for AMCs and missiles.

The strength factor decides how large of ships you can stop from warping away. This would be awesome to have on a medium sized ship, like a frigate, so you could send in your battleships to destroy that last cruiser.

And, well, the size factor is self-explanatory.

Oh, my God, I wrote a lot. But it should probably kill this thread, sadly.

 

[Scythe7]

A transporter module, with a docking-module like teleportation field that teleports all players standing inside to another field of the same faction, would be a good idea. You would go up to the module, press r, and a choice menu of all same-faction transporters within range would pop up for you to select which to teleport to.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think we need FTL/Warp/Gates because we need different travel speeds for combat/travel.



I like that you would need to charge up. Maybe let a warp-drive be 1/2 as power hungry as a thruster, but it actually uses 2x as much (4x thrust).

• Maybe: You need to build up a degenerating wasted-thrust storage (10x mass). You enter warp only if you be above this \"thrust-storage\".

I prefer planets and the inner 27 sectors of a sun system to be warp interceptors. Maybe warp would only be possible in the outermost 2 sectors of sun systems along an axis?



I would also like dynamic sectors (planet sector = 5km