Gazz wrote:I'm strongly against "jump from anywhere to anywhere" jumpdrives, though.
This is one of the worst features of the X series because it totally destroys the vastness of space and practically removes "defending anything" from the game.
*poof* Missile frigate jumps in and starts launching 200 torpedoes at your factory complex.
Your ships have little hope of intercepting a spread-out barrage so your complex that took days to build is crippled in 2 minutes. Good game.

that problem arouse from X's effectively infinite ranges for jumpdrives.

we dont have to repeat the same issue.
with jump ranges limited by the capabilities of the ship and its equipment, and not by the size of its cargo hold, we can make the system work
(at least much less broken than in X)

Range wasn't even the big issue. Doesn't matter if you jump 1x or 5x to get there without "traveling".
The problem is that you have great control over where you arrive.
You can pop up in 2-4 spots in almost every hostile system with a fleet of any size, anytime, making any attempt at defense moot.
There is just no way you can fortify so many areas in every sector adequately.

This makes every sector in the game interchangeable - other than for mine-able asteroids.
Horribly boring at the strategic level.

If there's a zone with a junction of 3 (fixed) jump points / wormholes that people have to go through, that's a strategic choke point that is worth fortifying and fighting over.
Until someone discovers another route and a wormhole closer to your backyard.

well, the fixed Jump gates would most likely already be in tactical locations, based aroud range of feasible wormhole connections.
so its likely that the only by capship reachable systems would be the jumpgate-connected ones.
and maybe not even those, as jumpgates would be far more effective in opening wormholes.
you may can heave a biiiig support ship, carrying an WHM for a fleet of smaller ships, approaching the range of the jumpgates.
but this would severely limit your ability to fight and to be mobile and independent.

by limiting range and availability on ships we'd mitigate the problems of X (infinite range and every ship is equipped with this infinite range without penalties for doing so).

Cornflakes_91 wrote:you may can heave a biiiig support ship, carrying an WHM for a fleet of smaller ships, approaching the range of the jumpgates.
but this would severely limit your ability to fight and to be mobile and independent.

Not if I bring 10 big support ships and just leave them behind while my battle fleet jumps into the hostile system, right past all the defenses, and destroys their economic base. The rest is mop-up.

The big deal is being able to arrive in a place in this system that the enemy cannot be defending. Doesn't even matter if you get to choose the exact point. (if you do, it's even more overpowered)
As long as it's far away from all fixed jump nodes, you can enter any system completely uncontested with a fleet of any size.
Range and availability are minor issues in comparison.

you can bring 10 ships, 1.5 times the size of jumpgates, sure.
but would you still need to go around the blockades if you can mobilize the economic equivalent of a few solar systems in support ships?

The number of ships is pretty irrelevant.
A defense in depth is impossible in open space. See any thread about space mines. (that go boom)

If you have to simultaneously defend - or be ready to - every single stationary asset against the full force of the enemy war fleet, your only realistic choice is not to defend anything and hope they don't attack you. Because if they do there is nothing you can do about it.
Thermopylae wouldn't even have been a footnote in the history books if the persian army could have skipped right over the spartans on an infinite number of paths.

I didn't read the part about WHM--was too busy liking the rest of the idea.

Gazz is right though. If anyone can jump into a system, or if anyone can jump anywhere (regardless of distance) there is no advance warning and no way to prepare or defend anything. If I can't force a choke point, then it means it will be impossible to defend a system. There will be no more "System blockaded from everything" type set up if someone can just jump around those jump points.

I do like the idea save for the "Jump to anywhere from anywhere" idea.

Why not do what EVE Online does and make it so that jump drives need a target to establish a connection with? So that in order to utilise the jump drive system, you first need to either construct a station at the target location or send a ship there.

Stations will be stationary and therefore can't just be moved arbitrarily around at the owner's whim. Ships may have to induce pseudo-gravity wells like in EVE (or something similar) for the jump drive to lock onto - this may involve anchoring to generate a sufficient amount of power required to sustain this. This can also cause the ship to light up like a beacon.

The defender should patrol their controlled territory well enough to notice enemy stations built inside of it, and they should be able to notice enemy ships lighting up like beacons if they're vigilant. Since this works in EVE Online, I reckon it could work here as well.

OK, this argument is less about the suggestion and more about the general concept of jump drives.

However, I will propose the obvious solution to the problem Gazz has stated. A wormhole generator can only link to an existing wormhole, not to any arbitrary point in space. This means choke points are still choke points, but it also means that you get most of the benefit of the jump drive (not having to cross 10 systems to get to a system that's 10 jumps away).

Furthermore, it raises an interesting potential: if a wormhole generator can only link to existing wormholes, how about we have the ability for another generating ship to infiltrate enemy space, set up an 'orphan' wormhole, which we then link to from our side of space? This means that it is possibly to subvert choke points, but at great risk to the attacker (any ship carrying a generator is going to be expensive just because it's a big ship, and the first ship will always have to come through a choke point). Staying on top of scanning and patrolling your territory should easily thwart this.

EDIT : Pahaha. Pseudo-ninja'd.

JoshParnell wrote:Furthermore, it raises an interesting potential: if a wormhole generator can only link to existing wormholes, how about we have the ability for another generating ship to infiltrate enemy space, set up an 'orphan' wormhole, which we then link to from our side of space?

I just said this, but you were too busy thinking exactly the same thing as me to notice.

I.e. you were typing.

It happens

Works for me. As you can only have one system loaded at a time, other systems won't really count as choke points to begin with, which I suppose is as it should be. In the vastness of space, the idea of getting a "choke point" doesn't really make sense, unless everyone makes a bee-line for whatever they're attacking. Josh has a point, though. I very much like the orphan wormhole idea.

I think it could kind of work like fast traveling... for instance, the faction generating the wormhole must have already been at the endpoint system. This could also keep enemies from suddenly entering your territory unannounced - they would need to send a scout ship first, which could give you time to prepare.

I've not been following this particular conversation overly closely, though, and somebody may have already suggested that.

I really like the name 'orphan wormhole'. Makes you wonder a bit about which wormholes bred it into existence, though. But I like the term a lot.

So, could you conceivably pop out at the wormhole that was just created by a jumpdrive as well? Would be fantastic gameplay if you were just about to give the command for your fleet to enter the wormhole when out pops a fleet in front of you because some big bad empire 20 systems away was monitoring the wormhole network, saw yours created, knew it had to be a capital-ship and decided to blitz you like the boogieman coming out of your closet?

JoshParnell wrote:OK, this argument is less about the suggestion and more about the general concept of jump drives.

However, I will propose the obvious solution to the problem Gazz has stated. A wormhole generator can only link to an existing wormhole, not to any arbitrary point in space. This means choke points are still choke points, but it also means that you get most of the benefit of the jump drive (not having to cross 10 systems to get to a system that's 10 jumps away).

Furthermore, it raises an interesting potential: if a wormhole generator can only link to existing wormholes, how about we have the ability for another generating ship to infiltrate enemy space, set up an 'orphan' wormhole, which we then link to from our side of space? This means that it is possibly to subvert choke points, but at great risk to the attacker (any ship carrying a generator is going to be expensive just because it's a big ship, and the first ship will always have to come through a choke point). Staying on top of scanning and patrolling your territory should easily thwart this.

EDIT : Pahaha. Pseudo-ninja'd.

Love it!