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Time Management and Acceleration

#1
Is there a general idea for how time will be managed in LT?

From my perspective there are two distinct options for time management:

The first is simply scaling the game around real time movement, ala EVE Online's warping, where it never takes more than 10-20 seconds to get somewhere intrasystem.
The second is time warping ala X3, where you fly at relatively normal speeds with time acceleration to make the 10 minutes it may take to get somewhere only take 1 minute.
<Detritus> I went up to my mom and said "hey... do you feel like giving five dollars to black lives matter?" and she laughed and said no :v <Black--Snow> my life does matter though ~~ added by Hema on Jun 11 2020 (2770)
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#2
I believe LT will handle closer to EVE as far as time goes. I think everything will be based around a given period of time, say for instance a 5 hour in-game play window where most things can be completed within this window of time. Time would run linearly and would not need to be accelerated for any reason. LT of course can be paused though, as it's a single player game.
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#3
BFett wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 8:55 pm
I believe LT will handle closer to EVE as far as time goes. I think everything will be based around a given period of time, say for instance a 5 hour in-game play window where most things can be completed within this window of time. Time would run linearly and would not need to be accelerated for any reason. LT of course can be paused though, as it's a single player game.
Did Josh specify whether his 'travel lanes' will be default in all systems?

Building new systems without them would be incredibly difficult to balance travel-wise if they're not and there's no other quick way to get around.

Sub light burning can't be properly balanced since you might have a fighter going 500m/s and a battleship moving 50m/s. One takes 10x the amount of time to traverse the same distance, so either you've got a very very quick travel time as a fighter (And subsequently a very small system / battlefield) or a very very slow travel time as a battleship.
<Detritus> I went up to my mom and said "hey... do you feel like giving five dollars to black lives matter?" and she laughed and said no :v <Black--Snow> my life does matter though ~~ added by Hema on Jun 11 2020 (2770)
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#4
Black--Snow wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:35 pm
Sub light burning can't be properly balanced since you might have a fighter going 500m/s and a battleship moving 50m/s. One takes 10x the amount of time to traverse the same distance, so either you've got a very very quick travel time as a fighter (And subsequently a very small system / battlefield) or a very very slow travel time as a battleship.
I think this can be balanced by limiting the fighter's range and introducing carrier dynamics.
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#5
0111narwhalz wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:38 pm
Black--Snow wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:35 pm
Sub light burning can't be properly balanced since you might have a fighter going 500m/s and a battleship moving 50m/s. One takes 10x the amount of time to traverse the same distance, so either you've got a very very quick travel time as a fighter (And subsequently a very small system / battlefield) or a very very slow travel time as a battleship.
I think this can be balanced by limiting the fighter's range and introducing carrier dynamics.
Corvette flies 250m/s
Frigate flies 200m/s

You just get the same issues with slightly less severity. You also get the issue that the system becomes really small. Personally I don't want any ship to be able to fly across systems quickly in sublight, it makes the great expanse feel so much less expansive.
<Detritus> I went up to my mom and said "hey... do you feel like giving five dollars to black lives matter?" and she laughed and said no :v <Black--Snow> my life does matter though ~~ added by Hema on Jun 11 2020 (2770)
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#6
I think auto pilot should be a thing if it isn't already planned, and I also think that it's very possible that the player may be busy enough managing other things that they don't necessarily have to wait for their ship to travel from A to B as they'll have plenty of things to occupy their time. I also have a feeling that flying across a system (the active important bits) is going to take a matter of minutes as opposed to hours. These are just assumptions though, and I understand that they could be very wrong especially given the fact that each system is infinite in size.

As far as fighters vs larger ships, that came up before and the solution was to decrease acceleration and maneuverability in exchange for higher top speeds. This means that you can still have nimble fighters, but for getting places large ships are more effective over time.
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#7
...or you get a secondary drive mode like there has been from the very beginning. Cruise drive.
Which is there for in-system travel and can have an independent balance curve from battledrive.

Also: where is it a problem that different ship types have different traversal speeds?
Do you want the whole game to consist out of rapid strike dreadnoughts?
You dont want fighters to be able to outrun everything they cant outfight?


Also: go play some freelancer and see that you can have a fun game without being everywhere in 30 seconds.
(Or at least check if you have as much of an attention span as 13 yeat old me...)
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#8
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:57 pm
...or you get a secondary drive mode like there has been from the very beginning. Cruise drive.
Which is there for in-system travel and can have an independent balance curve from battledrive.

Also: where is it a problem that different ship types have different traversal speeds?
Do you want the whole game to consist out of rapid strike dreadnoughts?
You dont want fighters to be able to outrun everything they cant outfight?


Also: go play some freelancer and see that you can have a fun game without being everywhere in 30 seconds.
(Or at least check if you have as much of an attention span as 13 yeat old me...)
I didn't realise there was a cruise drive. I'd only known about the 'warp lanes'.

The issue is only when ships travel intrasystem with sub light (i.e. X3) where you can get a ship that takes 10 seconds at 10x SETA to get from gate to gate and another ship that takes 3 minutes at 10x SETA. X3 does it /okay/ because at normal speeds the systems still feel relatively vast, but the travel doesn't take an absolute age when there's nothing to do but fly.

Like I said in IRC, it's not attention span. If I'm concentrating on playing a game I don't want the game to have long wait times, because then I'm concentrating on nothing. I don't believe games are supposed to be secondary activities that you look over at every minute to set your ship on a straight course to the next location.
EVE and X3 both suffer from that, though not terribly because their travel times are reduced.

You either make travel relatively quick or you make travel relatively interesting, so that you're not left 'playing' a game once every couple minutes.

Games are meant to be consistently engaging. They aren't meant to be sporadically entertaining with boringness in between.
<Detritus> I went up to my mom and said "hey... do you feel like giving five dollars to black lives matter?" and she laughed and said no :v <Black--Snow> my life does matter though ~~ added by Hema on Jun 11 2020 (2770)
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#9
These are all questions of how time passes when we're in the driver's seat of a ship, playing the game in some version of first-person perspective.

I think there's also an assumption that time will pass at a much faster rate during the initial generation of the game world, before we start playing. Josh has previously said he'd like to generate the social (NPCs & factions) part of the game universe in a sort of historical sequence rather than just randomizing everything. That, to me, implies a relatively very fast rate of activity, where most things are being simulated at a low level of detail, before the game clock slows down to "normal" speed and the player enters the universe.

Well, if this is possible, why not allow players to optionally speed time back up again when we're pulled out to a system map, or a sector map, or a universe map, dropping back to 1x speed when we return to first-person ship control mode? If the capability for fast-clock/high-simulation game processing is there, why not let us use it?
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#10
Black--Snow wrote:
Wed Jul 25, 2018 12:25 am
Games are meant to be consistently engaging. They aren't meant to be sporadically entertaining with boringness in between.
Hmm... I'm not sure what to make of what you say here, Snow. It's rarely the case that a game meets all of an individual's requirements. I find some aspects of space games, like mining, to be a real turn off but I know from what I've watched, read or heard that this is not the case for all gamers. I don't feel the need to whizz around at breakneck speed to enjoy a game. That's probably why I like open world games where I can do things at a more leisurely pace if I so desire.

Maybe that's an age thing but I'm sure there are others who share my views who are younger than me. :)

It's always good to have choices in a game. :angel:
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#11
I always prefer a 'fictional' mechanic -like travel lanes (if they are what I think they are) or capital ships with jump drives- than a 'patch' -like fast travel or time acceleration-. I don't care if it takes time to go from one place to another, but I'm the kind of person that walks around in GTA V instead of going everywhere in vehicles, so I'm probably not your typical player. (I also like to follow traffic lights and use cabs a lot, never skipping the journey. I really like to enjoy the environment I am in.)

Note: To follow traffic lines in GTA V you need a mod, as traffic lights are broken in the vanilla game. I presume that mods for LT will take care of all the minutia. :)
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Re: Time Management and Acceleration

#12
I think finding the default time-rates and pacing will be a rather significant part of beta testing.

My own opinion is that major objects in a system such as planets and wormholes should be about 10-15 minutes from each other at sublight speeds and 30-90 seconds on a warp rail or cruise drive (which should definitely not be standard on all ships). This may mean that it takes 30,45,60 minutes to cross a "whole" system between the furthest major objects at sublight, but only 5-10 on a warp rail. I think this would give a decent sense of scale without being too large. Of course getting between say a planet and a nearby asteroid zone should only take about 1 minute or so at sublight.

For Construction, that's more complicated because theoretically construction will require all the time to gather the required materials, which need to actually be collected from the world. At normal first person speed, this might take an hour or more to make a new station, though if the materials are on hand, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes. in a strategic mode speed, maybe 10 minutes to gather the materials and a minute to construct once they're on hand.
Black--Snow wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:35 pm
Did Josh specify whether his 'travel lanes' will be default in all systems?

Building new systems without them would be incredibly difficult to balance travel-wise if they're not and there's no other quick way to get around.

No, not all systems will have warp rails by default, only ones with a high enough population to warrant the construction of infrastructure. If you're in one of the core systems or on a major trade route, getting around shouldn't be much of a problem or take too long, but if you go out into the wilds you better be prepared with a cruise drive, or you're gonna indeed have to sit back and watch something while you wait to get where you're going.
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