Warp Module

[Ohman95]

An idea that came up to me and a few friends. It would be a module installed on a ship, that can instantly (very quickly) transport your ship to a specified sector. To balance it, it would require a lot of power, and have both a charge-up when using it, and a cooldown before using it again. I imagine that the charge-up and cooldown (maybe even power consumption), will increase depending on the distance between your current sector and the one you're warping to.
Not sure it's been suggested before, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has.

 

[clearskiesNL]

its hasnt been suggested on the forums yet but i suggested it to schema and beetlebear cause they are making a fast travel so i made a texture for a hyper drive basicly your idea

 

[asmageddon]

Personally I think that ships themselves shouldn't have such an ability.
IMO it should be implemented as warp gates buildable on planets or space stations. If you want to place a requirement of sorts on the player, you can make it disable shields for a short while or drain all of ship power when traveling. Perhaps also "contaminate" the ship so doing it many times in a row can damage you.
Also, add maximum distance (3 sectors?) and "routes" (like (8, 8, 8) -> (11, 8, 8) -> (12, 6, 8) -> (11, 7, 9), etc.) and have the requirement of the warp gates being connected (dunno how it would be done though, figure it out for yourself)

 

[clearskiesNL]

uum then you have something like eve online
and well this aint eve online

 

[asmageddon]

How is that an argument? You could just as well say "if you have blocks then you will have something like minecraft and this isn't minecraft so we will have spheres"
As for why I'm against adding the ability for any ship to teleport anywhere, it's because:

1. 
   IMO it shouldn't be possible to travel to other sectors without first exploring them
2. 
   It should be required to set up a gate or relay or something like that because otherwise it will be possible to just teleport into an enemy sector without any preparation which would be pretty bad for gameplay. (no frontiers, defense lines, etc. - enemies just teleport into your base)
3. 
   I don't think that teleportation (which in reality isn't even possible) would require little enough energy to be feasible for a ship.
4. 
   Actually flying around the universe would be kinda meaningless if you could just teleport anywhere you wanted

Whereas with warpgates, it would:

1. 
   Require preparation - building the gate, which would make them much more strategical and important (a crucial point to defend and attack)
2. 
   Allow every empire/faction to create its own travel network, alliances could, among others, give access to warpgates of the other civ
3. 
   They could be named, which is better than just remembering numbers of sector you wanted to go to
4. 
   Their size would limit the size of ships that can be teleported, meaning that giant planet-sized motherships couldn't just teleport into an enemy sector, but would instead need to fly there manually.

Hope this clears up why I'm against the idea.

 

[emsreaper]

I play eve, and while I don't mind the gates there is nothing better than being able to jump a capital ship into a different system. It would be nice if the warp core, or FTL or w/e name you want to give it could be applied to every ship and this is why:
- as of right now enemies are not very strong, assumedy they will be improved. wouldn't it be scary to jump your ship randomly into a system? blind jumps to beacons in eve never end well, you almost always have a scout or a seperate cyno.
- adding to the previous point, not wanting to lose your ship gives you two options 1: get a friend in a smaller, faster and presumably cheaper ship to jump around or fly ahead and scout for you or 2: say screw it and risk it.
- gates are kinda boring. everyone and everything uses gates. eve online, mass effect (mass relays are essentially a gate). why not do it like battlestar galactica? have to map where you are going (we need a galaxy map btw), how far it is, spool up the drive (draining power as it does this) and then have to initiate the jump.
- if exploration is the problem: adding a map where jumps ONLY to previously discovered areas is possible. keeps you from jumping clear across the galaxy in one shot, but would allow you to get home quickly instead of being stranded.

these are all my personal ideas and things i'd like to see implemented. if there was an option to use both gates and ftl/jump/warp/etc then that would be acceptable, make gates easier to use and require little or none of the ships power, while the ship drive would use loads of power (requiring a few dozen or more power cores to power enough cores to move large ships). all this obviously requires development and balancing. also i'm no game dev so i don't even know what is within reason to program (although it doesn't seem any of this is to far of a reach)

 

[Zer0t3ch]

Cool idea guys, and I love to see this kind of debated coming from one idea, but I myself am neutral, they both seem like good ideas and therefor I say both.

Have one be instant but require a lot more time and effort, whereas the module could be slow but still require a lot of power.

 

[emsreaper]

It just seems that gates would be something to extend the range of your ship beyond that of your jump drive, or for smaller ships that don't have the power capabilities for jumps. massive capital ships (im talking so big that the main cannon will shred small asteroids) on the other hand should have the power requirement to power up some sort of module to propel them quickly or instantly to a distant location.
now, for balance, ive been thinking, if there are people worried about a giant capital ship landing on their base and blowing their base up in a few seconds, make a delay b/w the time the ship lands and the time that it can fire, or move or both. this would give the defender some time to move their ships or begin firing or whatever the situation may be.
these are suggestions and as I play I will try and make more or add input on others.

 

[S-Guy]

I do kind of like the idea of having both. Gates and jumps can both have a place in gameplay - the way that I usually see things done is like emsreaper mentioned: gates are typically used by smaller ships that aren't large/powerful enough to mount jump drives, while jump drives are used by large, powerful ships that are often too large to fit through gates. (Sometimes, gates are also used for travelling very large distances for which it would be infeasible to use a jump drive.)

Both ideas can be balanced through various means - the tradeoff for a jump drive would almost certainly be power draw - I like the idea of power requirements/charge times changing depending on the length of the jump - and the ship would likely not be able to fight at full efficiency until the power cores had time to recharge. Gates would likely be easier to set up, but they could also require their own dedicated power source to operate/recharge, with recharge times increasing with the number of generators. They could also require more power depending on how far away their corresponding gate is. (Maybe they could be more energy efficient than jump drives?) Maybe they could also be switched to jump to different gates on the fly, so that it would be possible to build hub gates that connect to many different systems!

There are certainly a lot of possibilities, for both ideas. Perhaps it could also be possible to customize the size and shape of gates using blocks (like a frame of some sort), and require larger amounts of power to operate larger gates? Perhaps jump drives could function like shields, where grouping them together would essentially give you a bubble in which everything is teleported. (This would definitely require balancing, however - such a tool could be quite dangerous! It could have possibilities for mining and other related uses, however.) Perhaps they could instead teleport everything that is connected to them, requiring larger amounts of power for larger numbers of blocks. Imagine, it could be possible to jump entire space stations or asteroids - the uses are potentially endless!

Personally, if there's anything I'd like to see, it would be a jump drive similar to the one featured in Evochron Mercenary, where you could input specific coordinates to make very precise jumps. (I.E. a specific space station, asteroid, planet, etc within a system, instead of just jumping into the middle of a system.)

Anyways, it's important to remain open-minded! We don't necessarily have to use only one method or another - if done right, we could get the best of both worlds, and have some truly refined systems for travelling across the galaxy!

 

[Zer0t3ch]

I think it should have that, but that you have to like wire up some kind of massive warp-core that has to be built from many different blocks only found on planets for the jump.

 

[VariousArtist]

Warp = Bad idea. Jump into an ore sector, strip mine the sector, jump home, avoided all risks to move your butt to that sector. Just a tool for lazy people.

 

[emsreaper]

the key with adding something like a Jump Drive is balance. If you have to manually input coordinates (x,y,z) to reach a destination that takes time to find. If there is also a spool up time after inputting coordinates (or before you can input coordinates) that is another balancing factor. If your power is sucked dry and you can't move or shoot and have no shields upon landing then that is a HUGE risk. If you have to spend fuel based on the distance of the jump and size of your ship people will be less likely to make long jumps with huge ships because it will be expensive. It is also very unlikely that people in a large multiplayer game will want to risk jumping that expensive a ship a long distance without support or knowledge of the safety of the system. I for one play eve online, even when there is a cyno beacon available I prefer to have friendly eyes in the system to make sure its clear because losing a capital ship is not cheap.
Point being, just saying it is a bad idea with your reason being that people will profit easier is a pretty poor reason. If that is the case then gates should be predetermined as well because people shouldn't b able to set up their own gates to sectors that are rich in ore. The idea is balance and jump drives/warp drives are pretty common amongst space based sci-fi. Hell even Star Trek has a warp drive. The ability to do this should be there, whether it will be widely used or used only to get those slow moving capital ships out of harms way in a pinch is to be determined by the players.

 

[S-Guy]

Basically, yeah. There are loads and loads of systems that have the potential to work, but only if they're balanced properly. First, I feel that warp drives should be prohibitively expensive, since it is very advanced technology with the potential to completely redefine how you get around in space, and it should cost even more if you're using it to move something large. Second, it should be required that you have coordinates for jumping, meaning that you would have to travel to an area and mark down the coordinates in order to be able to jump there. (Perhaps there could also be a more advanced and much much more expensive drive that could use a map instead?) Third, it would naturally require incredible amounts of power to operate, increasing the power draw depending on the size of the ship and the distance warping. I covered most of this earlier, so I'd rather not just repeat myself.
I believe that players should be able to place their own warp gates, but they should be a great deal more expensive than warp drives, as they are permenant installations. They should also have a very large power draw and charge/recharge time that increases with warping distance. Again, a player would have to travel to an area to place a gate for any warp gate to connect to - they couldn't just warp anywhere they wanted from a warp gate, although I think that it should be possible to travel to different warp gates from one warp gate. (Perhaps this could also be handled by different types of gates - you could have a type of gate that only connects to one other gate, and a more expensive type of gate that would allow you to select a gate to travel to?) Gates could also be customizeable in shape and size using blocks - imagine, you could make a small gate for smaller craft, or build a massive gate for capital ships! Naturally this would be balanced by exponentially increasing power draw - it would be ludacris for a small warp gate to have the same power draw as a large one!
Again, there are lots and lots of options for how to handle a system - what makes or breaks it is how it's balanced. Sometimes you just have to think outside the box!

 

[Peajee]

One more voice pro warpdrive.
For two reasons: It bring another element of surprise to the gameplay we all know and love from startrek or stargate.
Second: If the technology is available to everyone but very expensive...shouldnt that balance the game for itself?
But I agree, you should only be able to jump to known positions.

 

[Pyroxfire]

i think it would be awesome to have a jump drive and player built gates. i also would love to see the abilty to have a navigation computer to make wav points to sectors and see a map to see where your friendlys are and such

 

[HunterAP]

Couple of ideas for balance... Warp drives won't function until they are a specfic size... For Star Trek, you needed the nacelles to be a certain size in order for them to function properly... Make a similar limitation... If you want to build a warp ship, you have to have nacelles, or an equally large warp system. Someone earlier said that they would require lots of power and lots of time to charge up... I agree. Warping should have a considerable time/power limitation.
So give us two limitations to work with... Power, and warp system size. Make the warp system size requirements relative to the size of the ship, and the power supply requirements relative to the size of the warp system. Set a minimum size requirement for the warp system so that only large ships can warp. (Needs to span an area that's 100 units, either 10x10, 5x20, etc) The size of the warp system can also contribute to how far the ship can warp. The large ship limitation will make shuttle bays, and carriers a necessity.

Next idea. Warp inhibitors. You can build warp inhibitors on ships or stations. Warp inhibitors will require lots of power and size, just like the warp drives. They prevent people from entering (or skipping over) the sector with the warp inhibitor in it. This could add a whole new dimension to strategy, with players walling off sections of space with warp inhibitors.

 

[HunterAP]

You know, after a little bit of thought... If you limit the warp range by the size of the warp system, that kind of eliminates the need for a ship size limitation. Small ships can only warp a short distance, which makes a warp drive impractical/useless. Just be sure that the power requirements are pretty insane.

 

[R_Artis]

That there would be like hyperdrives for ship (mother ships). When you travel with hyperdrive it drains all of ships energy, and if there is an enemy in sight you cant fast travel. And if you fastravel into enemy sector (place where enemy ships are) the fast travel stops and you have to destroy enemy or escape manualy...

 

[Puffyrock]

one way i was thinking that could help with balancing of warp/hyper drives for ships would be beacon jumps as in being able to jump only to a beacon or making it cheaper to jump to beacons rather then random jumps still allows for gates and what not to be setup in the game for all kindas of ships where as the beacon is a forward staging option that can be dropped in a location for a time much like a temp spawn point if one is worried about them being dropped behind enemy lines then posting them for all to see would be a possible way as in the transmition type cant be incripted so its seeable to both teams but only usable by 1

 

[jplauy]

I really like the idea of War/Hiperspace Drive put on Systems, and in combination with the charge/energy requirement for the hiperdrive, Other think is that you can only enter or leave the System from the borders of him