- Space is big. It should feel big.
In X3, flying my trusty Shrike, every sector in the game is 10 seconds away. That's how long it takes to charge up the jump drive and pop over there. The ship has a huge cargo bay so carrying enormous amounts of jump fuel is no issue at all.
If interstellar travel is instantaneous (beyond a loading screen), you are hurting the perception of "big space".
On long distance traveling, refilling a small fuel tank (Frontier) is more a chore than interesting.
Depends on the implementation, though.
Instantaneous long distance travel makes military strategy a joke.
Several of the largest X3 mod projects tried to limit the use of the jump drive, either by altering it's cargo class so that only the largest ships could carry it, or by taking it out completely.
There was no way to scale or balance it. It was all or nothing. You can't work with such a feature! - Different travel times for different methods of travel
- Static interstellar wormholes / gates would be the fastest method. Near instantaneous.
Instead, the player spends time traveling between these specific locations.
Such choke points can also be defended quite easily, which can be a pro or con, depending on your intention. - Point-To-Point jumpdrive.
Definitely a possibility.
- Space constraints should limit this to big ships, also giving carriers a better-defined role.
- Travel time should be substantial.
- There may have to be no-jump zones around planets, arguably around large space stations.
The larger your orbital / deep space structures, the larger the no-jump zone.
That way potential aggressors give the defenders more time to redeploy and actually protect the structure. - In Star Wars (and other universes) capital ships can be equipped with a Gravity Well Projector, which simulates the no-jump zone around a planet, allowing ships to prevent everyone else from escaping.
This works well... until the player acquires such a system.
Then there is a gigantic shift in tactical control that would be terribly hard to balance. Better to stay away from such potential cheesiness.
- How do you arrive in the target system?
I imagine that in the target system, a widely visible jump anomaly pops up, telling everyone about when something will arrive there - maybe with a rough guesstimate on the size of the arriving total mass of ships.
Not only does this avoid needless collisions because local ships can evade this location in advance, it also gives potential defenders advance warning that something is coming.
Instantly popping attackers into the destination system is just lame.
For fixed travel locations like wormholes, the arrival point would be "close" to the entry point but far enough away not to create the huge mess such jump gates are in X3.
If travel is "near instantaneous", ships wouldn't have a chance to get out of the way in time.
Alternative: The arrival anomaly finds a "safe and empty" space to appear in. Other ships would then only have to avoid pathing into the newly created anomaly.
For formations, the arrival anomaly would last until they have all exited.
The "advance warning" mechanic could be applied to static jump points as well. You may not have the coverage to patrol your entire system in depth but if you detect a jump "flare", you still have a chance to react. Send a ship to find out who came a-calling. - Travel time and the player.
Sitting around, doing nothing, is never fun.
How do we keep the player engaged while his personal ship is traveling the space between systems - that doesn't actually exist ingame?
- The easy way out: let the player manage his other ships and assets while in flight, displaying an easily visible "travel countdown" in some corner of the screen.
- A mini game like Audiosurf, where the player can greatly speed up travel time by not just flying on autopilot.
This should affect the entire formation the player is part of.
- How exactly this could look? I'm thinking a tunnel where the player can use "gravity wells" to get a speed boost or has to evade nebulas that would slow him down.
Doesn't have to be super complicated since he will eventually arrive whatever he does. - This could also introduce a degree of uncertainty into the very powerful PTP jump concept. While flying through this tunnel, the occasional navigation hazard can pop up and damage the ship(s) if not evaded.
- You could even expand this into some sort of racing game and/or make timed delivery missions skill-based instead of flat out impossible.
"You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?…It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!" - I call it "G-Space", short for Guitar Hero Space.
- Once you fly a "record" time through a fixed anomaly, you could sell this "mapped path" to NPC, speeding up their travel time, or have your own ships travel faster through these specific anomalies.
- How exactly this could look? I'm thinking a tunnel where the player can use "gravity wells" to get a speed boost or has to evade nebulas that would slow him down.
- Time compression.
Josh already pointed out that he knows about Doing It Right™ so time compression is not going to be a tactical combat exploit that benefits the player.
- Travel time that the player is being forced to spend idle obviously needs to be shortened.
For gate / wormhole / whatever travel, I imagine a special setting that is independent of the "tactical" time compression and goes aaaaaall the way up. - The control for it is only displayed during such travels and the selected setting is remembered.
These settings include a MAX setting, which means the game speeds up as much as the CPU can handle while still computing the rest of the "active" universe. - To allow for player control, time compression cannot just start at the max setting the next time the player uses this travel method.
Instead, the acceleration always starts at 1x and keeps ticking up... and the player can interrupt this process if he has some empire management to do.
- Travel time that the player is being forced to spend idle obviously needs to be shortened.
- Average travel speed could vary.
If you're traveling between systems "in a nebula", the average speed drops.
In case of the mini game, you get a higher chance of "power-downs" popping up.
"Hyper" travel speed could also be influenced by specific ship systems or a pilot skill.
Post
Wed Jan 02, 2013 9:13 am
#1
Interstellar Travel, Wormholes, and Jump Drives
While Time acceleration vs. super cruise / in-system jumps discusses intra-system travel, interstellar travel has it's own issues.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.