Gates in Elite

[SuperG]

Did you know Elite though, which is kind of what ED is based around ?

No but read on forums a lot about it. My first space game is privateer.

No jump-gates there, though to be fair it was boxes-in-space ... if you traveled on impulse engines (or whatever they were called) in 1 direction for a very long time you never left the star system you were in. You were still in the same box in the same system. Only hyperspace left the region of space.

Frontier did away with boxes in space and allowed for freedom of travel.

ED should continue with that but sadly MP causes issues ...

well singleplayer games have time accelerators. Doesnt work well with MP.

But freelancer had MP to and fastlanes.

 

[Andrew Sayers]

Hi

J've been playing games like Eve online.

Just wonder, are they any plans to have system gates in Eilte Dangerous?

Jump gates were discussed as part of the hyperspace proposal way back in February. There's a lot of good arguments if you can trawl through such a huge thread, but ultimately Frontier decided neither to have static entry nor exit points for hyperspace. Personally I think they missed a trick by not giving people the option to enter hyperspace without an on-board engine, but avoiding jump gates on exit from hyperspace reflects an important difference in the design goals of ED vs. EVE.

I haven't played EVE, but from what I've heard a big part of the game is about being exposed to the harsh realities of life from the safety of your computer. That's not a goal for ED, which is more about exciting space adventures. EVE's jump gates are a good way to ensure people are exposed to harshness as soon as they leave the safe zones, but not a good way to ensure everyone has an exciting time. Instead, players in ED will emerge from hyperspace in a seemingly-random location, with a match-making system that tries to ensure people appear near the players they would find most interesting to meet. Frontier have only hinted about exactly how this will work (hence some of the confusion in this thread), but I think it's fair to say during the alpha/beta stages they'll tweak it to work however is the most fun for the most people.

 

[FS3DPete]

Ugh... I hated the idea of jump gates in every game that utilised them. I'd rather have a ship that required fuel and a hyperdrive than to have to jump through a series of gates, all at fixed positions in space, in order to get somewhere.

Maybe if they were optional it would be OK for people without hyperspace-capable ships, but they should never be mandatory, nor even a primary means of transport between systems for players.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Personally I think they missed a trick by not giving people the option to enter hyperspace without an on-board engine

You mean you advocate jump gates then ? :S

 

[Brian]

No gates please!! They are just bottle necks. I definitely prefer to have my own jump engines.

Brian

 

[Andrew Sayers]

You mean you advocate jump gates then ? :S

My position hasn't changed since this post in the February - allowing players to jump out from hyperspace openings not of their making opens up a bunch of interesting choices, like misdirecting an assassin by opening a hyperspace entry point to system A, not using it and instead tailgating somebody headed to system B. In fact, it's just occurred to me the current proposal would force players to abandon a teammate whose hyperdrive was destroyed in combat. But I certainly wouldn't advocate jump gates being the only way to get into hyperspace, and don't see any benefit in using them to get out of hyperspace at all.

Having said that, the nature of the DDF is that sometimes things don't go your way. The proposal we ended up with is fine and I wouldn't necessarily be so strongly in favour of the above if I had to implement it

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

My position hasn't changed since this post in the February - allowing players to jump out from hyperspace openings not of their making

To a degree that will be allowed in ED by means of a hyperspace cloud analyiser so you can follow people not of your making but if you don't have a hyperspace engine then you can't jump to hyperspace. I imagine this is down to the fact that you're not opening a wormhole that others could use to follow you, but rather folding space / creating a warp shell to bypass the laws of physics / something else that requires huge amounts of power.

I don't think it's a trick missed.

 

[danjo]

No thanks... apart from removing the feeling that space is vast they also raise the question...

If you need jumpgates to get to another system....how did anyone get there to build the jumpgates?

for a minute i was under the impression that you think this is REAL !

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

you think this is REAL !

Well .. it is .. isn't it ?

 

[Karl]

I'm not a fan of gates, in fact I hated them in the games that utilized them. But reason for that was that I thought these games were far too small for gates and travel doesn't cost you anything - well, except for the horrible "autocrashpilot" in X-series

However, these are insignificantly tiny compared to Elite universe (Frontier).

Gates in ED? Guaranteed not as we know them. But if it had gates I'd like it to be like this:

1) A few (3-5'ish) at the start for the 1000 light year (max) range of jumps, to already settled tiny pockets in the near galaxy region. This is huge if we still have 15 light year'ish jump ranges on our ships, but still would need 100 of these in a line to cross the galaxy.

2) If we can affect the settlement expansion of the galaxy through how we play, the devs can provide like one new gate every month (100 months, or 8 years if arranged in a line - game is long dead by then - for most ).

3) Also we the players can choose to cooperate to provide the necessary resources and build our own gate networks (even longer range jump drives for that matter), but near impossible to create one yourself. Or equally easy as achieving Elite status in FE2 - a sense of hopelessness Maybe our explorers find areas that is particularly well suited for mining but currently unsettled. Players with help of dev team now cause the settlement of this region, allowing some very dynamic possibilities.

4) Updates can be synched to each players single player game on start of new player profile; select what parts to update (maybe I want to start completely blank, I need to be able to not synchronize anything). If I jump into some MP action, probably forced synchronization with server data.

Given the unpopularity of gates (myself included), this is something I'd be careful about. Settling other parts of the galaxy might make it impossible to find others at all. Even if not included as a game mechanic initially, I'd plan ahead for the possible structure setup so that the engine could handle something like this later on instead of facing the wall if "everyone" demands it. Naturally it also depends on how the game is planned to be supported and further developed after launch to increase its potential longevity.

But hey, that's just me

 

[Arowx]

NO jump gates.

But with gates we could have highways, traffic lights, ques and parking.

I'm thinking jump gates could be like giant ferry ports in space.

 

[Jenner]

Never liked gates. Bleah. Personal preference of course. I much prefer the route that ED is taking with plain ol' Hyperspace.

 

[jan]

Doubt there be gates in Elite, since most ships dont need 1 whit the internal jump drives and all.

But never say never might get some in the future expansions of unaccessible areas thats not from the start like thargoid empire Space or other Space races.

It be odd if thargoids and humans are the only spacefaring races in the Milkyway Galaxy.