Hyperspace jump beta elephant

[beelbeebub]

I always imagined, especially with systems that needed permits or enemy systems, that we would be able to "sneak in" the back way.

Either through buying data legally, on the blackmarket or by scanning and then that you could then select a different gravity well within a system - either another star or large gas giant - to latch the drive on to.

It seems those dreams might never happen, or if they do take a long time.

Way back when I had a proposal that went something like this.
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We can lock onto Nav beacons and HS to a nav beacon, where we get dumped into normal space or you can do a "unguided" jump which dumps you at the centre of gravity of the system, or possibly a certain distance from the nearest star to your departure point (so two pilots jumping to the same system from different directions may end up around different stars). For player friendliness the "natural" jumps dump you in SC.
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So if you want to get to a specific place and it has a nav beacon you can jump there, but nav beacons are a natural place for ambush and attack. If you are jumping to a well ordered system, there will probably be an on station security presence to keep any trouble to a minimum, but some of the more "bohemian" systems might not. Alternatively, if you are allied to an unfriendly power or wanted in that system, the security vessels might be your biggest problem.
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This would introduce a few gameplay elements:
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The nav beacon choke points would promote interaction and allow for more effective blockades, ambushes etc.
The nav becons could be set up at stars or even in some cases at stations (if the stations are rich enough to afford them), these would become natural "trading posts".
The natural "gravity well" jump points would be much harder to police, making them good for smuggling or transition a system you might have legal issues in, but there is the disadvantage of longer SC transit times.
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An optional extra wrinkle that could be added was to make the FSD cool down (and in extreme cases any hull degradation/damage) related to how well you "flew" the HS jump. This would see the HS jump played like the SC interdiction "mini game" (ideally with better graphics, more related to the tunnel structure than HUD elements). The better the player manages to "follow" the path the shorter the FSD cooldown an less and hull degradation. The difficulty of the "path" is dictated by the length of the jump compared to the ships max jump range, so jumping at or near (or even slightly over) the ships max jump range will be more difficult. Jumping to a Nav beacon would be much easier than jumping to a gravity well. Explorers with real flying skill would then get an advantage by being able to complete bigger jumps with less damage than less skilled rivals.

- - - Updated - - -

Edit: Great minds?...

Had a few ideas on this, but I doubt we'll see a change to in system travel for a long while:

- All frameshift/hyperspace journeys end with you exiting to real space not super cruise. If you jump to a system with a nav beacon (and have nav beacon lock 'on') you end up there otherwise you have to control your exit into real space like in the interdiction mini game.
- You could, intentionally or otherwise, end up quite a distance from the main star or very close.
- This means you could bypass an actual system blockade at the risk of ship damage/greater distance
- Exploring could be more hazardous but repairing needs to be easier possibly creating the need for explorers to be resupplied periodically.


Fuel scooping could be done in real space
- if being attacked is too much of an issue make heat/radiation affect both exposed and utility hard points causing damage and malfunctions.


In system frameshift 'jumps' could be based around another interdiction style mini-game allowing you to traverse branching hyperspace tunnels.
- would need some way of ensuring people don't use it to bypass interdiction
- perhaps prematurely exiting would cause large amounts of damage/drive malfunctions/destruction

 

[Titus Balls]

Way back when I had a proposal that went something like this.
.
We can lock onto Nav beacons and HS to a nav beacon, where we get dumped into normal space or you can do a "unguided" jump which dumps you at the centre of gravity of the system, or possibly a certain distance from the nearest star to your departure point (so two pilots jumping to the same system from different directions may end up around different stars). For player friendliness the "natural" jumps dump you in SC.
.
So if you want to get to a specific place and it has a nav beacon you can jump there, but nav beacons are a natural place for ambush and attack. If you are jumping to a well ordered system, there will probably be an on station security presence to keep any trouble to a minimum, but some of the more "bohemian" systems might not. Alternatively, if you are allied to an unfriendly power or wanted in that system, the security vessels might be your biggest problem.
.
This would introduce a few gameplay elements:
.
The nav beacon choke points would promote interaction and allow for more effective blockades, ambushes etc.
The nav becons could be set up at stars or even in some cases at stations (if the stations are rich enough to afford them), these would become natural "trading posts".
The natural "gravity well" jump points would be much harder to police, making them good for smuggling or transition a system you might have legal issues in, but there is the disadvantage of longer SC transit times.
.
An optional extra wrinkle that could be added was to make the FSD cool down (and in extreme cases any hull degradation/damage) related to how well you "flew" the HS jump. This would see the HS jump played like the SC interdiction "mini game" (ideally with better graphics, more related to the tunnel structure than HUD elements). The better the player manages to "follow" the path the shorter the FSD cooldown an less and hull degradation. The difficulty of the "path" is dictated by the length of the jump compared to the ships max jump range, so jumping at or near (or even slightly over) the ships max jump range will be more difficult. Jumping to a Nav beacon would be much easier than jumping to a gravity well. Explorers with real flying skill would then get an advantage by being able to complete bigger jumps with less damage than less skilled rivals.

Probably the anti-Eve brigade would jump on this and say NO TOO MUCH LIKE EVE, WE'LL HAVE NO FUN HERE.

 

[CmdrPSB]

Last thing I remember being said about it, back in Feb:

We definitely want to add a micro jump between stars within a system (not only does this fit in with the context of how the frame shift drive uses large bodies for navigation, it also helps significantly with those systems where you currently arrive around the "wrong" star, where civilisation has set up camp around a different star in the system).

We're also going to look at getting more content directly into super cruise (e.g. having ships you're looking for in super cruise as well as at signal sources, making super cruise traffic and behaviour more supportive of system state), as well as making more of signal sources (we're looking at adding more reasons to visit signal sources and this will hopefully just grow over time).

The usual caveats apply, of course - no ETA, no guarantee (development can be difficult to predict).

 

[Herik]

That's all nice and well, but what about those systems where the main stars are +10,000ls apart? Some of these systems are even low population and should you decide to supercruise for 15min to that one lone station, you'd also find not much happening in those 15 minutes.

In my opinion, directly jumping to any body in a system isn't necessary, jumping to main stars more than 10,000ls though would be a major improvement.

Seems appropriate, and plausible +1

 

[Araviel]

i dont like the idea of being able to lock the FSD onto everything in a system.
i think that people would abuse it and use it to bypass supercruise all together by just hyper jumping in and out of systems instead.

however placing NAV beacons at selected points that you could lock on to is something i would support.

 

[beelbeebub]

Probably the anti-Eve brigade would jump on this and say NO TOO MUCH LIKE EVE, WE'LL HAVE NO FUN HERE.

Heh heh, stuff 'em!
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The key point is that the navy points are not mandatory, just convenient. The player has to trade risk (of ambush by goons at choke point) vs reward (of more efficient travel).
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If the skill based jump is implemented, skilful players can avoid ambush by skilfully flying the jump and arriving with very minimal FSD cool down, allowing a near instantaneous jump out to avoid the waiting hordes.
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This would mean a skilful pilot would be a better smuggler or blockade runner than others.
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A skilful explorer would be able to jump further with less damage as would a trader.
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Still all pie in the sky at the mo.....

 

[Schrefu]

This should be done for gameplay reasons rather than any "realism" reasons, after all we are talking about a fictional FTL drive here, who can say what the restrictions on it's use are?

The observable mechanism of FSD and Hyperjumps seem pretty solid to me. And even if they're fictional it makes for much better fiction if things like that behave consistent within the constraints set by the general setting (ie the game). So, try to think about this way: "realistic behaviour" actually means "consistent behavior within the setting". And yes, who could say what the restrictions are... Frontier of course But it would still make for bad style in a fictional sense for them to add something entirely new and not consistent with the current observable behaviour.

Had a few ideas on this, but I doubt we'll see a change to in system travel for a long while ...

Way back when I had a proposal that went something like this...

Not that I don't find these ideas interesting, but I think the time for major redesign of core elements is over. What were your opinions on the original topic, selecting hyperspace exit star, or microjumps between main stars in systems?

 

[zynaps]

I'm personally sick of always arriving at the star and get it thrown into my face, it's getting real tiresome and they are not that pretty. Frontier did it better and the fact it dropped you off in space, not necessarily near anything, ADDED to immersion that space is big. The "sunscreen" canopy near stars is silly. Frontier jumps, EVE style stars (blindingly bright) and scooping ONLY from certain planets would go along way IMHO. It would make exploration harder for one, which would be good because it's much much too easy.

 

[Janichsan]

What I don't understand is a system as Mizar :

Two stars, nav beacon is on the first, all planets and stations are on the second 100k+ ls away.
Why do we jump on the empty star ?

Because it is the heavier of both stars.

 

[beelbeebub]

The observable mechanism of FSD and Hyperjumps seem pretty solid to me. And even if they're fictional it makes for much better fiction if things like that behave consistent within the constraints set by the general setting (ie the game). So, try to think about this way: "realistic behaviour" actually means "consistent behavior within the setting". And yes, who could say what the restrictions are... Frontier of course But it would still make for bad style in a fictional sense for them to add something entirely new and not consistent with the current observable behaviour.




Not that I don't find these ideas interesting, but I think the time for major redesign of core elements is over. What were your opinions on the original topic, selecting hyperspace exit star, or microjumps between main stars in systems?

You're right, the time for major redesigns has passed,, mind you all those changes could be incrementally added with patches. There's no reason that interdiction for example, might not get an over haul to make it less follow the HUD element and more follow the HS tunnel (a small distinction as they are all fictionally computer graphics, but one that might look better, the current setup feels a little late 90's mini game IMHO).
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To answer you OP directly, I fear micro jumps between stations and stars in a system, or simply arriving at stations or stars would effectively kill SC. The original plan was much as you describe but it was scrapped in favour of SC.
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That being said, an option to select the star you arrive at if they are sufficiently far apart would be a possibility and would be able to be fit into the fiction nicely (the FSD only has a certain "resolution" on targets so if they are less than 50kls apart it treats them as one giant asks and dumps you at the normal place, maybe better FSDs might have better "resolution").
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The other option would be to factor the extra distance into the trade prices (stuff is more expensive, meaning bigger profits) and maybe the bounties of any criminal hiding out (people with really big bounties on their heads will want a nice out of the way spot to hang out). Essentially do some stuff to make the extra distance worth it.

 

[Enride]

From what I read, early on in the wee beginning of alpha it was proposed that you can jump anywhere to your destination. People wanted the supercruise method instead. I would really like to be able to choose which star to jump to, though.

Supercruise makes sense, because it allows stuff like pirating to happen.

I remember some people wanting to be able to hyperjump to every place in a system....effectivly removing all form of travel and reducing the game to a level based arena game. Thankfully this didnt happen.

That said, we definitly should be able to choose the destination star in multi star systems, and "mini jump" between these stars.

 

[Jaeger]

i dont like the idea of being able to lock the FSD onto everything in a system.
i think that people would abuse it and use it to bypass supercruise all together by just hyper jumping in and out of systems instead.

however placing NAV beacons at selected points that you could lock on to is something i would support.

No not everything just gravity wells.