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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#46
Ya. Still the mass energy of 500kg [by e = mc(sq.)] is extreme as meters per second is the typical unit of expression. So in essence you are multiply that 500kg by the square of the speed of light. Yikes! That's an extremely energetic event.

I like the problem of how when you collapse the warp field it emits all the stored matter caught in the warp field in a single omnidirectional burst away from the ship. The amount of energy is predicted to wipe out the planet you arrive near. Interestingly a way to work around this would be to say create then collapse the warp field very rapidly so that you could disperse this energy along the way. So say you only travel 2 000 000mi. per burst, if that cycles twice a second you have a speed of 4 000 000mi/s! The speed of light is only 186 000mi/s. So a little over 21 times the speed of light! Increase your cycle rate.... increase your speed (given that your warp flash results in 2 000 000 miles traveled per blink).
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#47
I have a suggestion that is not intended for LT but for a game like LT. My suggestion is Instantaneous travel for the Player but non-Instantaneous travel for NPCs (single player game like Limit Theory). Alright now let me elaborate.

There is an in game clock. The moment the player starts playing for the first time, the clock begins counting at the starting date of 0. It uses the same clock/dating system we use in reality with 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 30 days per year, and 12 months per year (so 360 day years).

In the game the method of interstellar travel is using star gates like the ones in eve online. There will be different sizes of star gates which is also true in eve. The smallest forms of gates, we'll call them A Gates, can only connect to other star gates within a 10 ly radius around the gate's location. It can only be assumed the larger the gate size the higher launch radius the gate is able to shoot objects and this is true. However, it should be noted that if another star gate is within the launcher gate's radius, regardless of whether the target gate's launch radius contains the launcher gate, a ship can be sent to that gate. So in a sense, star gates using this logic would be acting as both Launchers and Receivers.

So now with that basic information out of the way. How is this system going to be different from anything else already suggested?

NOTE: The galaxy adopts the concept of a finite number of star systems which would differ from Limit Theory, however the concepts could still be applied with some clever coding.

Time is going to be twisted. To keep things simple I'm going to say that the speed of objects while being launched by a star gate is exactly the speed of light.

Now, 1 day of in game time is equivalent to 10 minutes of real life time.

Heres an example that I think will make it easy to understand.

Lets say this galaxy is a complete replica of the Milky Way galaxy with the distance between the stars to scale. The player is spawned in our own solar system. There is an A Gate in the Solar System and there is an A gate in the Alpha Centauri system 4.37 ly away.

Now with the the scene set I'm going to step through 2 scenarios.

1. The player is in the solar system and decides to go to Alpha Centauri. He goes to the gate and is launched. When the player presses the launch button the following happens: The game calculates how long in game time it would take the player to travel that distance. While the player is traveling to Alpha Centauri (aka pretty loading screen) the game is simulating everything in the galaxy for the amount of ingame time that it would take the player to travel that distance at the speed of light. So in this example, it would take the player 4.37 Years to reach his destination. What this means to the player is that while he is *traveling*(loading) 4.37 years of simulation of the galaxy will take place. Once he reaches his destination, simulation returns to normal. The key point here is that the player is only having to wait a small amount of time.

2. A player is in the solar system and an NPC in Alpha Centauri decides to take the star gate to our Solar System. The calculation is the same but unlike the player, his travel is not instantenous. Instead the game takes the in game time it would take to travel and converts it using the conversion formula described above ( 10 real life minutes = 1 day in game ) and keeps the NPC in travel (aka removed from the game) for that real life amount of time. So in this case, once the NPC pressed the launch button, to the player he would be out of the game for 23943 real minutes (65 days).

Obviously this conversion rate is pretty ridiculous and needs heavy revising. However, this method allows several things. The player doesn't have to wait. Travel is real and has consqueuences and is tactical.

In the case of a star gate being destroyed while a ship is in warp, Lore can just say that the launcher and receiver are only need to be connected for the launch itself, once the launch is underway, the condition of the launcher or receiver no longer matters and the ship will reach its destination regardless.

I would love some feedback, especially if there are major flaws
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#48
The idea is definitely unique. However, I'm not sure what application it would have. Yeah, the player can move instantly, but for what reason? What is the motive in the game that drives this force?

I just can't imagine a game that would utilize this functionality in a way that would make it interesting. Do you have a game idea (outside of just this game mechanic) that would utilize it so I could get a better idea?
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#49
first: you destroyed any influence the AI has on interstellar flight when the player isnt jumping :P
at least with your time constant.

also, what happens in the time the player jumps with his assets?
who controls them?
why cant the player control them while in flight?
if there is no FTL comms, how does the player control his out of system assets?

it would also interfer with any possible multiplayer version, as you cant warp time in a multiplayer game.

also, what magus said, what would it give to gameplay?
why should we bother to build such a system?
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#50
Despite Cornflakes' objections, I really like the idea of asymmetrical time passage. It opens up for many ideas. I just don't know what sort of game would be able to take advantage of it when vast distances are involved.

Simply put, it feels like "bullet-time" over vast distances. I can see how bullet-time can be cool in action games or close-range stuff (i.e. The Matrix) but the vast distances makes it hard for me to understand. No offense intended, I'm just honestly curious because of what cool things could be done with it.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#53
It's definitely novel, and it would mean that you have to make damn sure you really wanted to leave a system, since much will happen whilst you're instantaneously travelling. In that regard it would add some strategic elements to the game.

But in general I tend to agree with Cornflakes and DW: it's an interesting idea, but probably not applicable to LT simply because of it's Freelancer 2 goal.
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#54
This is good stuff thank you for responding.

SKIP TO THE "WHY" SECTION FOR A SUMMARY

I've adjusted some rules and added some features to this concept to adapt to the issues stated. I'm going to explain the new concepts, step through a new scenario, and then explain the "Why".

I would like the following assumptions to be made going into this reiteration:
- This concept is no longer supposed to be possibility that could be applied to LT, i hope this doesn't lessen discussion though :thumbup:
- This concept is solely designed for a single player game in mind, however some changes could be possible for a multiplayer version

Our Scene:
We have our 3 Red, Blue, and Green stars. The Red and Blue stars both have Large star-gates that are within range of each other and the Green star has a Small star-gate that can only reach the star-gate in the Blue system. (The visual should make this more clear). There are 2 main NPCs. One is located at the red star and the other at the blue. These 2 are loyal to the player and take commands from him. The player owns a factory on a planet in the Red system that produces 10 robots per in-game day. There is a storage building next to the factory that can hold up to 500 robots. The player has placed the NPC stationed in the Red system to be in charge of the facilities on the planet. This NPC is in charge of the facility's garrison and strategy if attacked. Most importantly though, this NPC is in charge of issuing other NPCs under him to take freighter loads of robots to the market hub in the Blue system. A freighter holds 50 robots which means one is sent from the Red system to the Blue system every 5 in-game days to maximize cargo space. When a freighter load arrives in the blue system, it is dropped off at the station and the other main NPC, who is assigned to this market hub, takes control of the goods and sells them. The freighter pilot returns back to the Red system with possible supplies or an empty cargo. The player is located in the green system along with 5 members of a fleet who were exploring the system.
Image http://imgur.com/qxV8J5B.png

Okay my first big change is I am going to allow the player to set the speed at which all star-gates in the game send objects ranging from instant-travel to very slow. It will be allowed for this speed rate to be changed at any time in the settings. The why is explained later like everything else.

This time I'm going to say 1 hour of real-life time is equivalent to 1 day in game time. Items launched from star-gates travel at a speed of 5 ly per day or 1825x the speed of light. (yay science fiction) The in-game clock system will be the same. (360 day years) So using these values our travel times are...

Red to Blue is 10 ly (or vice versa) In-Game: 2 Days ----- Real-Life: 2 Hours (120 Minutes)
Green to Blue is 1 ly (or vice versa) In-Game: 0.2 Days ----- Real-Life: 0.2 Hours (12 Minutes)

I would now like to introduce a new feature called the Time/Management Screen. This screen can be opened at any time and will present a display that is similar to what appears in the image below. Sections A and D are the Management half of the screen. Section A allows the player to issue commands and/or anything under his control with all the options available being logically displayed. Filters will be used to allow the player to navigate through the options to find what he wants to do. Section D of the Management screen is a display that displays information on the item selected. Different items have different kinds of information displayed about them that are related to that item. A couple items types are Systems, Stars, Planets, Moons, Stations, Factions, NPCs, Facilities, Specific Ships. Sections D also has a part where there are links to other items that are closely related to the selected item which really gives this navigation tool it's power. Obviously the illustration is a very simple version of what the final version would be.

Before moving on to the other sections I want to make these points clear. Universal Communicator is now a thing in this concept. The player can access this screen at any time and issue commands to NPCs that he has control over or are loyal to him/her. (The consequences of being detected while he/she is communicating in certain situations like in enemy territory for example is a different topic). Also, NPCs inherit all abilities that the player is able to perform with the Management half of this screen meaning they now can issue commands whenever they like as well.

Section C displays where the player is currently located. In the illustration, the player is traveling to a new system and it shows where the player left from, where the player is heading, where the player is currently on that route, an ETA, and % that represents how much of the travel has been covered.

Section B is where the player manipulates time. They can choose to pass time by either pressing one of the time amount buttons, go to a certain date, or selected the ETA amount shown in Section C if the player is traveling somewhere. When the player has chosen the time amount he wants to jump forward, he will press the Execute button. (Longer amounts of time will trigger a window that pops up warning the player of possible consequences of what could happen if they confirm the time change). Once the player finally confirms that the time jump should be executed, the entire game is simulated for the amount of time the player selected. It should be noted that if the player is traveling he can jump forward to a time where he is still traveling. This means he can issue new commands to adjust to what has happened in the game during the time passed in the time jump.

Also, if an event occurs during the player's time jump that would have an affect on the player or his empire or assets etc... (how much of an affect that the event has to to cause the following have will be adjustable by the player) then the time jump will be halted to the time where the event is occurring. This prevents the player's empire from being destroyed during his time jump without him even knowing!
Image http://imgur.com/1cXQVXi

I have created a new scenario that explores how these mechanics would react to certain situations in the scene I created above using these new features. Intra-System travel is instant in the Scenario.

Scenario:
[/b]

In-Game Date: 5000/10/5 00:00
In-Game Total Time Passed: 0 Days 0 Hour 0 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 0 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 0
Robots in Storage: 0
The moment our scenario begins our factory begins making robots for the first time.
The player decides to leave the Green system leaving the fleet to explore alone. He takes the star-gate to the Blue system which is 1 ly. The player does a time jump that brings him to the moment he lands in the Blue system.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/5 04:48
In-Game Total Time Passed: 0 Days 4 Hours 48 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 0 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 2
Robots in Storage: 2
The player relieves the NPC at the market hub and takes direct control of all his current sell market orders that were previously being updated/adjusted by the NPC. The player has a knack for trading and does this for 3 hours.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/8 04:48
In-Game Total Time Passed: 3 Days 4 Hours 48 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 3 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 32
Robots in Storage: 32
The player returns the market role back to the NPC and decides to head over to the Red system because he was informed by his facility manager in the Red systems that hostiles have been detected in the system and there could be trouble. The travel distance is 10 ly and the player decides to only time jump to the 50% point along the route to react if needed to the situation in the Red system.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/9 04:48
In-Game Total Time Passed: 4 Days 4 Hours 48 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 3 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 42
Robots in Storage: 42
The player is jump time ends and he is half way to his destination. He goes to his Management screen and realizes that his facility in the Red system is not currently in any danger. However, he decides to issue an order his fleet in the Green system to head towards the Red system. After issuing this order he executes a time jump based that is his ETA to the Red system.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/9 09:36
In-Game Total Time Passed: 4 Days 9 Hours 36 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 3 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 44
Robots in Storage: 44
The following occurred during the players time jump (aka during simulation). The fleet that the player ordered to head to the Red system arrived at the midway Blue system. They immediately head to the Red system.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/10 00:00
In-Game Total Time Passed: 5 Days 0 Hours 0 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 3 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 50
Robots in Storage: 0
The following occurred during the players time jump (aka during simulation). At this time it was detected by the manager NPC that there was enough robots in storage for a full-freighter load to be sent to the market hub in the Blue system. He orders a NPC under him to take 50 robots in one of the player's freighters assigned to this facility and hand them over to the NPC in the market hub.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/10 04:48
In-Game Total Time Passed: 5 Days 4 Hours 48 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 3 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 52
Robots in Storage: 2
The player arrives in the Red system. The freighter has traveled 10% of the distance to the Blue system. The fleet is still traveling. The player goes to his facility and the enemy in the system had been setting up an attacking force near the facility and executes a land attack with the intentions of destroying the garrison and capturing the facility. The player relieves the manager NPC and takes command of all the NPCs in the garrison and coordinates a defensive strategy.

In-Game Date: 5000/10/11 04:48
In-Game Total Time Passed: 6 Days 4 Hours 48 Minutes
Real-Life Total Time Passed: 4 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Robots Made: 62
Robots in Storage: 12
The player finishes the Real-Life hour long battle and was defeated because the enemy's force was too overwhelming for the relatively small garrison that he had assigned to this facility. The entire garrison and the player were destroyed. (not going into player death, different topic) The fleet did not arrive in time to provide air support to turn the tides. The freighter has traveled 60% of the distance to the Blue system. The fleet has traveled 90% of the distance to the Red system.

Why???


Why do we want this? Well let me answer that by asking, what is the alternative?

I believe all possible alternatives boil down to either..
1. Instant Interstellar Travel Everywhere
This method has negative effects on grand-scale strategy because tactical decisions canbe easily reversed if a mistake was made. Mistakes that would be detrimental could be made less severe because of this system. The economic system will also suffer greatly because it would be easier for traders to get from A to B and providing supply quickly for any demand they discover.

2. Interstellar Travel Time Relative to Distance Traveled w/o Time Manipulation
This system would be immediately broken if the scale of systems was realistic meaning the player would be waiting days or weeks to go from system A to B. Broken. The only way this system would even work was if the distance between systems was extremely small which would take away the dynamic of star spacing which contradicts the point of this system because it is to give meaning to distances between stars.

Now, the sole purpose of this system I presented is so the player is able to jump past periods of time where he would be doing nothing. However because the game is being simulated while the jump is taking place and the time jump will be halted if something unexpected occurs. The player can manage his empire even while traveling. When things are set the way he wants, he can resume his time jump.

Long travel times are gone, but the fun game-play benefits of a dynamic strategy and a dynamic economy on the galaxy scale remain.

My summary of the summary:
- This system allows instant travel time if you want it
- This system allows the changing of speed at which star gates operate at any time
- This system allows the NPC and player to issue universal commands at any time, even while traveling
- This system allows the player to time jump at any time, for any amount of time he wants (well not trillions of years obviously)
- This system gives the player unique power to take the the tools provided and use them to mold the game into what they want their personal Interstellar travel experience to be.
- This system allows the player to play the big man in the chair who just commands all NPCs who take on the minor roles in his empire. Or he can go take part in a minor role himself. (This statement is really, really simplified)
- The time halt mechanic is customizable


If this reiteration did not solve or even attempt to solve an issue in the objections, please point it out. :thumbup:
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#55
joker wrote:I believe all possible alternatives boil down to either..
1. Instant Interstellar Travel Everywhere
This method has negative effects on grand-scale strategy because tactical decisions canbe easily reversed if a mistake was made. Mistakes that would be detrimental could be made less severe because of this system. The economic system will also suffer greatly because it would be easier for traders to get from A to B and providing supply quickly for any demand they discover.

that is only true if the time to get to jump to the other system is zero as well.

then you have broken something else than just your jump system.

why make the jumps themself need time if you can as well adapt the time between jumps?

example:
you are 10 minutes away from the jumpgate red-> blue and between the arrival point from red->blue and the blue-> green jumpgate its another 20 minutes and your target is another 10 minutes from the arrival point in green.

how is that different from having the jump between red and blue take 36 minutes and the jump from blue to green take 4?
except that the player can now do things while travelling, instead of being forced to use time acceleration to make travel bearable at all?

travel times between jumpgates and zero jump time gives the same effect as having zero travel time between jumps but long jump times.
except that the player isnt forced into a fancy loading screen and can interact with the world while travelling.


also, theres a nice counter example to your "grand strategy" and "trade" suffering from instant jump times: EVE Online.
i know of no other game that has more grand strategy and trade on a "per ship" scale than EVE.

in EVE you dont just fly through a hundred systems because you saw a nice sale over there, because the travel times between gates are non-trivial.
one or two gates are no big obstacle, but when you see 7, 8, 15 jumps between you and your goal... you think twice about it


same with Sins of a Solar Empire, jumps between locations had pretty negligible time needs, but getting from one jump point to the other takes a lot of time.



also, distance between systems already matters, jump connections are more and more rare the further the distance between two systems.
so the topological distance (distance in jumps) increases roughly with the real distance between systems.

one field where i could see the use of a variation of your idea is when the player builds jumpgates.
when creating a jump route an object has to travel the distance to the target in a straight line and when it arrives a jump bridge can be opened.
this object could travel at a comparatively slow-ish speed (say 5ly per real time hour) and there has to be a "catcher" on the other end to receive the object when it arrives, enabling to generate a working connection.
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#56
Cornflakes_91 wrote: also, theres a nice counter example to your "grand strategy" and "trade" suffering from instant jump times: EVE Online.
i know of no other game that has more grand strategy and trade on a "per ship" scale than EVE.

in EVE you dont just fly through a hundred systems because you saw a nice sale over there, because the travel times between gates are non-trivial.
one or two gates are no big obstacle, but when you see 7, 8, 15 jumps between you and your goal... you think twice about it
I've played Eve for the past 3 years (recently haven't been) so I think I can speak on specific details of Eve.

Before the details though I think it is important to note that Eve is an MMORPG. There is a reason MMO is the first three letters in the acronym. Eve takes an incredible amount of balancing and thought to create mechanics that will not be broken immediately because of the massive amount of real people that partake in the world. However, because it is an MMO travel instant interstellar travel has to be instant of course, I agree instant travel for multiplayer is the only way to go.

Or is it?

Eve: The Combat Side

Eve has a problem. Its called blobs. Eve has your big 5000 man alliances that can get a 3000 man fleet up during prime-time to do the alliance's leaders bidding. If an enemy capital ship gets "tackeled" (you cant warp away or hide) alone by a friendly interdictor then a lot of yelling starts happening on comms and everybody warps to the POS and they all use their jump bridge network which lets them skip "instant traveling" for instead "super instant traveling" by instantly passing over 20 systems . Oh, the tackled enemy capital is 100 systems away on the other side of the "gigantic universe"? Lol no problem mate. Just like all the other Nullsec Coalitions we have 30 Jump Bridges all over the universe and they are all connected so all 3000 ships can be on top of that enemy capital in 2-5 minutes. And Titans also have Jump Portal Generators which "create a bridge between systems without the use of a star-gate, allowing its companions access through vast tracts of space to join it on the battlefield" in case the battle your fleet is going to is 3 systems away from your closing jump-bridge. Titans are not rare, there are hundreds and hundreds so this is very common.

Prior to the end of 2014, Nullsec warfare boiled down to waiting for timers to hit 0, structure hitpoint grinding to get Sovereignty, twiddling your thumbs while waiting for scouts to find a target, and when a target is found you just travel their instantly. It doesn't matter if its across the galaxy because of your alliance's jump gate network. And once you land you just lock target that the FC (fleet commander) shouts out, press F1 (activates all your lasers), and wait for the target to die followed by rinse and repeat.


Now..

Have you heard of something called "Jump Fatigue"? It is a new feature that was implemented into Eve near the end of last year by CCP Games.

Exhibit A:
Eve Online Phoebe: Capital Ship Changes/Nerf
https://youtu.be/ZUqwbbm0bwI?t=13s
Should start at 0:13

Keypoints:
- Capitals can now use star-gates (a lot more riskier, gate camps etc...)
- Capital ships are losing their jump range from about 14 ly to only about 5 ly
- Jump Fatigue forces you to wait for your cool-down timer to wear off before you skip a bunch of systems again or travel yourself through the 40 systems you need to travel through.

Traveling through 40 systems using gate travel with a Capital is very, very, very boring and high risk

Exhibit B:
A Dummy's Guide To Jump Reactivation & Fatigue
https://www.themittani.com/features/dum ... on-fatigue
The visuals in the above article should make things more clear of what the player is seeing.

Exhibit C:
LONG-DISTANCE TRAVEL CHANGES INBOUND By CCP Greyscale
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev ... s-inbound/

So here we go, straight from the developers themselves...
Why this?/Why now?

Nullsec is stagnant and needs a change. This is the first of many steps in our plan.

Big fights are cool, but they’re crowding out more accessible and more frequent smaller ones.

These changes have positive implications for people not involved in sovereignty warfare, for example making use of capitals in lowsec less risky.
We expect the impact of these changes to be emergent, and as a consequence are unpredictable and will take a while to develop on TQ. This plays into our longer-term plans, as you’ll see in a second!
So, what is this boils down to that it was agreed that the Eve Universe was too small. It was too easy to go from point A to B when B was on the otherwise of the galaxy. CCP decided that it is okay to heavily restrict

CCP knows that a majority of Capital ship movement will still be jump drives, because it is just not smart to move Capitals through gates. They made it take more time to travel the farther you want to go with this Jump Fatigue system to create consequences for traveling father distances.

Eve: The Trade Side

Around 95% of Market Trades in Eve take place in the 5 Main Hubs in High Security space. Why? Because it is safe. Null Sec has industry guys who have fleets of Jump Freighters who bring the compressed materials to their Null bases and they make the items there. Everything is bought and sold in the hubs because it is the easiest way the system allows. It didn't matter if you were 200 systems away from the hub, you can just use jump freighter to travel quick.

They added jump-fatige, making the universe a lot longer to travel through and boom you can't instantly take your massive amount of materials to from the hub to 200 system deep null instantly anymore.

Of course the motto of Eve is "Adapt or Die" so the players always will, or just riot :D

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Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote: I believe all possible alternatives boil down to either..
1. Instant Interstellar Travel Everywhere
This method has negative effects on grand-scale strategy because tactical decisions canbe easily reversed if a mistake was made. Mistakes that would be detrimental could be made less severe because of this system. The economic system will also suffer greatly because it would be easier for traders to get from A to B and providing supply quickly for any demand they discover.
that is only true if the time to get to jump to the other system is zero as well.

then you have broken something else than just your jump system.

why make the jumps themself need time if you can as well adapt the time between jumps?

example:
you are 10 minutes away from the jumpgate red-> blue and between the arrival point from red->blue and the blue-> green jumpgate its another 20 minutes and your target is another 10 minutes from the arrival point in green.
I think that example has a lot more negative effects on gameplay.
So gate-to-gate travel is instant. If the travel time between gates is an average of 20 minutes, what am I going when I don't have anything to do??? What if I'm a lone wolf? If I want to go fight some dudes at the system next door am I just gonna twiddle my thumbs for 20 minutes because my ship is my only asset and I have nothing else to manage while I travel to the star-gate? That does not sound very pleasing. The player can't just leave his computer while he travels, this is Intra-System travel which I would assume means the player can be attacked while traveling. This system sounds like the player is forced to wait or do *something* while they travel.

Using the Time Jump mechanics the player can manage stuff if they want to while traveling or they can just get to the point and reach their destination. I think the average amount of time it takes to travel across a system, like in Eve's in-system travel, should be less then a minute. A lot can happen in a minute. But if Intra-System travel time is fairly low, which I just claimed is more fun for gameplay, then the system I proposed not only keeps low Intra-System travel times but also retains the value vast distances.
Cornflakes_91 wrote: how is that different from having the jump between red and blue take 36 minutes and the jump from blue to green take 4?
except that the player can now do things while travelling, instead of being forced to use time acceleration to make travel bearable at all?

travel times between jumpgates and zero jump time gives the same effect as having zero travel time between jumps but long jump times.
I do not agree with this statement: "travel times between jumpgates and zero jump time gives the same effect as having zero travel time between jumps but long jump times" and I said why above.
Cornflakes_91 wrote: except that the player isnt forced into a fancy loading screen and can interact with the world while travelling.
The only loading screen will be the seconds that it takes to simulate the chunks of time between time jumps? And I explained that the player can issue any kind of command that he wants while traveling.

I think you are comparing the experience of my vast distance travel to your short distance travel because in your system vast distance travel is instant. But I actually think your idea for short distance travel would only be possible if vast distances has time consequences because that would mean just like my point earlier that in-system travel can be fairly short so you can interact with the world. Otherwise if short distance travel is the real-time eater then you are just bored to death.
Cornflakes_91 wrote: one field where i could see the use of a variation of your idea is when the player builds jumpgates.
when creating a jump route an object has to travel the distance to the target in a straight line and when it arrives a jump bridge can be opened.
this object could travel at a comparatively slow-ish speed (say 5ly per real time hour) and there has to be a "catcher" on the other end to receive the object when it arrives, enabling to generate a working connection.
Oh, I was assuming star-gates are built from the conception of this idea. They would be assets for whoever controls them.
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Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#57
joker wrote:Before the details though I think it is important to note that Eve is an MMORPG. There is a reason MMO is the first three letters in the acronym. Eve takes an incredible amount of balancing and thought to create mechanics that will not be broken immediately because of the massive amount of real people that partake in the world. However, because it is an MMO travel instant interstellar travel has to be instant of course, I agree instant travel for multiplayer is the only way to go.
considering that LT has many aspects of an MMO i think its safe to assume that we can use the same general principles here.
joker wrote: [jump fatigue]
aaand CCP seems to agree with me, insignificant travel times between gates and zero jump time is bad, so they increased the time needed to get to make the jump, even though its "just" the jumpdrives/bridges that got nerfed ;)
and the travel method that needs time to be used, by the simple act of having to travel from one gate to another, got reinforced by that change.

the difference between "my" method and yours is that with your method you are absolutely forced to use time acceleration or wait for extended periods of time for something to happen.
as you cant do anything else after initiating a jump.

with fast jump and slow engines you can still decide to do something else, explore that asteroid field you just saw, look around that planetoid you just spotted in the distance, etc.

things you cant do while in hyperjump or in EVE (as they are pretty hamstrung with their realistic solar systems)

freelancer has much more interesting and in itself worthwile travel than EVE because it takes time to travel in it and the systems themself matter.
rather than just their gates and the linear distance between them

joker wrote: I think that example has a lot more negative effects on gameplay.
So gate-to-gate travel is instant. If the travel time between gates is an average of 20 minutes, what am I going when I don't have anything to do??? What if I'm a lone wolf? If I want to go fight some dudes at the system next door am I just gonna twiddle my thumbs for 20 minutes because my ship is my only asset and I have nothing else to manage while I travel to the star-gate? That does not sound very pleasing. The player can't just leave his computer while he travels, this is Intra-System travel which I would assume means the player can be attacked while traveling. This system sounds like the player is forced to wait or do *something* while they travel.
if you allow time acceleration during the jump, why not in system?
"auto pillock take me there" -> hit time acceleration

joker wrote: Using the Time Jump mechanics the player can manage stuff if they want to while traveling or they can just get to the point and reach their destination. I think the average amount of time it takes to travel across a system, like in Eve's in-system travel, should be less then a minute. A lot can happen in a minute. But if Intra-System travel time is fairly low, which I just claimed is more fun for gameplay, then the system I proposed not only keeps low Intra-System travel times but also retains the value vast distances.
and you just removed anything thats in the system from the equation, all a system is now are the gates,
anything thats between doesnt matter anymore because the few seconds you are in there dont enable any interaction
nothing that is in a system besides resources and gates matters.

and you can do nothing to change that because of the ridicolously fast travel time.


joker wrote:This system sounds like the player is forced to wait or do *something* while they travel.
and gives much more gameplay than essentially skipping travelling though systems and reintroducing the now "gained" time that is needed for the other gameplay areas to be balanced in a point where the player literally cant do anything but wait or skip it.

joker wrote:Eve has a problem. Its called blobs. Eve has your big 5000 man alliances that can get a 3000 man fleet up during prime-time to do the alliance's leaders bidding. If an enemy capital ship gets "tackeled" (you cant warp away or hide) alone by a friendly interdictor then a lot of yelling starts happening on comms and everybody warps to the POS and they all use their jump bridge network which lets them skip "instant traveling" for instead "super instant traveling" by instantly passing over 20 systems . Oh, the tackled enemy capital is 100 systems away on the other side of the "gigantic universe"? Lol no problem mate. Just like all the other Nullsec Coalitions we have 30 Jump Bridges all over the universe and they are all connected so all 3000 ships can be on top of that enemy capital in 2-5 minutes. And Titans also have Jump Portal Generators which "create a bridge between systems without the use of a star-gate, allowing its companions access through vast tracts of space to join it on the battlefield" in case the battle your fleet is going to is 3 systems away from your closing jump-bridge. Titans are not rare, there are hundreds and hundreds so this is very common.
yeah, and thats a thing that can be solved by limiting jumpgates to be built some distance apart, for example only on the side of the system thats pointing towards the target.
instead of allowing them to be bunched at the same location trivialising all travel times between them.
Post

Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#58
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote:Before the details though I think it is important to note that Eve is an MMORPG. There is a reason MMO is the first three letters in the acronym. Eve takes an incredible amount of balancing and thought to create mechanics that will not be broken immediately because of the massive amount of real people that partake in the world. However, because it is an MMO travel instant interstellar travel has to be instant of course, I agree instant travel for multiplayer is the only way to go.
considering that LT has many aspects of an MMO i think its safe to assume that we can use the same general principles here.
In some respects yes, but Eve has to deal with the human factors which mainly drives their game design which is an entire beast on its own. I honestly don't think LT has many aspects of an MMO, I think LT has some aspects similar to eve because they are large sci fi games and nature if this genre creates similarities, but not because of the MMO factor. The MMO part mainly introduced human interaction related gameplay, which is why eve survives to this day in the MMO market.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote: [jump fatigue]
aaand CCP seems to agree with me, insignificant travel times between gates and zero jump time is bad, so they increased the time needed to get to make the jump, even though its "just" the jumpdrives/bridges that got nerfed ;)
and the travel method that needs time to be used, by the simple act of having to travel from one gate to another, got reinforced by that change.
Actually I beg to differ. Jump time was added. However, jumping capitals is still the best option 95% of the time because of how risky it is to travel gate to gate. Capital and fleet travel was overpowered and it was nerfed. After the nerf it is still the best option over gate travel as it was before. It is faster in most situations and is still 100% safe if used correctly which it usually is. That is the catch, people are very careful with their Capitals and jumping instead of gate travels offers the option to be very safe if you have a scout which you need for cynos anyway (cynos light the jump where the Capital is sent to). Jump travel is still used a majority of the time over gate travel even with the changes..
Cornflakes_91 wrote: the difference between "my" method and yours is that with your method you are absolutely forced to use time acceleration or wait for extended periods of time for something to happen.
as you cant do anything else after initiating a jump.

with fast jump and slow engines you can still decide to do something else, explore that asteroid field you just saw, look around that planetoid you just spotted in the distance, etc.

things you cant do while in hyperjump or in EVE (as they are pretty hamstrung with their realistic solar systems)

freelancer has much more interesting and in itself worthwile travel than EVE because it takes time to travel in it and the systems themself matter.
rather than just their gates and the linear distance between them
Okay I might not have been clear. The way you described how your Intra-System travel is going to be is exactly how Intra-System travel would be in mine! However, you said the size of your systems would take 20 minutes to travel at max speed and I said mine would take less then a minute. When I say it takes less then a minute I was assuming the player is using an Intra-System travel system with that being either a warp drive like in Eve or with Intra-System highway gate things like in LT. Wer you getting the idea that the player would be able to cross a system with just thrusters in under a minute? Because that is not what I'm going for lol. If they are using the LT Intra-System travel way then yes I think it should usually be around a minute to do a straight shot all the way across.

The player can use time jump if they want to skip the 1 minute if they KNOW they dont care about what is going on in the system and just wants to skip the down time. However, if he sees the asteroid field or planet or moon or whatever like you said, the player can go explore it by hopping off the LT travel rails or w/e. All of this is IN the system I've proposed. All I've been talking about is system to system travel so far.

Like you, I do not like the Eve Intra-System travel because you can't deviate.
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote: I think that example has a lot more negative effects on gameplay.
So gate-to-gate travel is instant. If the travel time between gates is an average of 20 minutes, what am I going when I don't have anything to do??? What if I'm a lone wolf? If I want to go fight some dudes at the system next door am I just gonna twiddle my thumbs for 20 minutes because my ship is my only asset and I have nothing else to manage while I travel to the star-gate? That does not sound very pleasing. The player can't just leave his computer while he travels, this is Intra-System travel which I would assume means the player can be attacked while traveling. This system sounds like the player is forced to wait or do *something* while they travel.
if you allow time acceleration during the jump, why not in system?
"auto pillock take me there" -> hit time acceleration
Wait, what? You're previous statements were against acceleration but now you are asking me why it can't be used in your system? This makes no sense to me.
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote: Using the Time Jump mechanics the player can manage stuff if they want to while traveling or they can just get to the point and reach their destination. I think the average amount of time it takes to travel across a system, like in Eve's in-system travel, should be less then a minute. A lot can happen in a minute. But if Intra-System travel time is fairly low, which I just claimed is more fun for gameplay, then the system I proposed not only keeps low Intra-System travel times but also retains the value vast distances.
and you just removed anything thats in the system from the equation, all a system is now are the gates,
anything thats between doesnt matter anymore because the few seconds you are in there dont enable any interaction
nothing that is in a system besides resources and gates matters.

and you can do nothing to change that because of the ridicolously fast travel time.
I'm talking about managing stuff while traveling from system to system not in-system, which is needed because the world is being simulated while they go system to system. Like I explained above, my in-system travel is your idea of in-system travel so in-system travel is a major part of the equation, but if they are only traveling through the system they can accelerate or admire the sites
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote:This system sounds like the player is forced to wait or do *something* while they travel.
and gives much more gameplay than essentially skipping travelling though systems and reintroducing the now "gained" time that is needed for the other gameplay areas to be balanced in a point where the player literally cant do anything but wait or skip it.
I think I already hit this one. My in-system travel is yours.
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
joker wrote:Eve has a problem. Its called blobs.
yeah, and thats a thing that can be solved by limiting jumpgates to be built some distance apart, for example only on the side of the system thats pointing towards the target.
instead of allowing them to be bunched at the same location trivialising all travel times between them.
Sorry, I don't really get this.
Post

Re: Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives

#59
joker wrote: Actually I beg to differ. Jump time was added. However, jumping capitals is still the best option 95% of the time because of how risky it is to travel gate to gate. Capital and fleet travel was overpowered and it was nerfed. After the nerf it is still the best option over gate travel as it was before. It is faster in most situations and is still 100% safe if used correctly which it usually is. That is the catch, people are very careful with their Capitals and jumping instead of gate travels offers the option to be very safe if you have a scout which you need for cynos anyway (cynos light the jump where the Capital is sent to). Jump travel is still used a majority of the time over gate travel even with the changes..
and thats why i agreed on using a variaton of your system to open jump connections, you can have as many cynos and JD equipped ships as you like, but if the "jump cannon" takes an hour to connect, you cant move your troops as you like, at least not without good preparations

joker wrote: Okay I might not have been clear. The way you described how your Intra-System travel is going to be is exactly how Intra-System travel would be in mine! However, you said the size of your systems would take 20 minutes to travel at max speed and I said mine would take less then a minute. When I say it takes less then a minute I was assuming the player is using an Intra-System travel system with that being either a warp drive like in Eve or with Intra-System highway gate things like in LT. Wer you getting the idea that the player would be able to cross a system with just thrusters in under a minute? Because that is not what I'm going for lol. If they are using the LT Intra-System travel way then yes I think it should usually be around a minute to do a straight shot all the way across.

The player can use time jump if they want to skip the 1 minute if they KNOW they dont care about what is going on in the system and just wants to skip the down time. However, if he sees the asteroid field or planet or moon or whatever like you said, the player can go explore it by hopping off the LT travel rails or w/e. All of this is IN the system I've proposed. All I've been talking about is system to system travel so far.

Like you, I do not like the Eve Intra-System travel because you can't deviate.
heh, then we are a bit more on the same page than i thought.

with very heavy infra structure building and a relatively short distance (like, not from one edge of the system to the other) i could live with one minute total travel time
but that would be an edge case to me, i'd still say for a normal system traversal something between 3 and 7 minutes if theres infrastructure.

but then i dont expect warring factions to be able to use the infrastructure of the other faction, so i'll assume no infrastructure at all for most cases.

even though you did talk about intra-system travel, with your "it takes one minute" :P


Cornflakes_91 wrote: Wait, what? You're previous statements were against acceleration but now you are asking me why it can't be used in your system? This makes no sense to me.
im just against being forced to use time warp to make the whole thing even bearable to the player
with your two hours to make one jump in your example you could do nothing but use time acceleration, especially when you have to travel longer distances.
Joker wrote: Sorry, I don't really get this.
your talk about blobs and their instant transfer through all the eve universe was built on the omnipresent jump bridge network.

for your "5 minutes to everywhere" multiple jump bridge connections would have to be on the same station (or at least in the same system).

to avoid this you have to limit how close to each other you can build jumpgates, the simplest way would be to have them being positioned around the central star in the general direction of the target system.
so one cant position gates close together except for edge cases.
this limits the rate at which one can travel through any arrangement of jumpgates to something less broken than in EVE

maybe bind the effect to suns or in general large masses so that empty systems have a bit of an extra strategic value due to them being empty and free of jumpgate blocking masses.



also, other rate limiting mechanisms will already be in the game, so jumpgates wont be able to support infinite amounts of ship transfer at once
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