While time acceleration has it's own bundle of problems, so does a super-cruise mode. =)Hardenberg wrote:I'd rather prefer some type of "cruise mode" with all power routed to the engines to facilitate faster in-system travel (basically, the way Freelancer handled in-system travel).
- Autopilot woes.
Instead of a 100m/s ship traveling at a virtual 1000m/s (with the usual effects on autopilot object avoidance), you have a 100m/s ship traveling at 1000m/s.
See the problem? =) - When and where does it work?
- If you can engage super cruise anytime, no one will ever win a fight.
- You can't say that it "doesn't work with enemies around". If there is a lone fighter buzzing around my battleship, I couldn't care less if it's hostile or not.
- Having any ships nearby is not a good fail condition, either.
You want to allow formations of ships... - It would be reasonable for stationary large objects like stations or planets to kick you out of super cruise for safety reasons when you get close.
This could simply a matter of the size of the object. A huge dreadnaught might have it's own (tiny) gravity well that disables super cruise in a small radius.
As a result, escorting ships would either keep their distance or land on the dreadnaught to hitch a ride - both of which offers an interesting opening for a temporary vulnerability.
- What negatives are attached to using it in order to prevent anyone just taking off anytime?
- Huge energy drain, that sucks shield and weapon banks dry leaving the ship defenseless for x seconds before the drive engages.
If your shield / weapon energy is dry to begin with, it takes longer to charge.
Not recommended under fire. - Shields /weapons recharge while under way but on short hops, you still end up in less than stellar condition.
It's designed for long distance travel. - Extremely low steering while under way. It should not be a glorified afterburner.
- Shields must be down for the system to charge in the first place because they would prevent the "field" from being generated.
- Huge energy drain, that sucks shield and weapon banks dry leaving the ship defenseless for x seconds before the drive engages.
- How do you prevent ships from getting away?
Star Wars had ships / stations equipped with gravity well projectors, such as the Immobilizer 418 cruiser, which showed up in the X-Wing / Tie games. (no GWP equipped ships featured in movies)
This "placed a heavy drain on the generators" but prevented ships in a large radius to just bugger off.
This would limit the ability to considerably big ships.
OTOH, the GWP ship would be weakened by the power drain while the system is engaged so it would be an obvious target of everything that wants to get away. Not impossible to balance.
Another way would be technobabble anti matter gibberish mines (TAMGIM).
You drop and detonate one of those and all ships in the vicinity are unable to engage super cruise for x minutes.
(used in a different fashion by Weber in the Dahak series)
While it would be good that smallish pirate ships could use the functionality, there is no real counter to this. Not so good.