hyperspace musings

[Darth Ender]

What if fdev fleshed out hyperspace?

Hyperspace has a lot written about it in elite books that do not correlate to the game. What if fdev resolved that disconnect and gave us something awesome that would solve many issues all at once?

Proposal: Hyperspace is a second iteration of the stellar forge with new physical constraints entered ...creating a truly alien "galaxy" superimposed on ours.

Aspects of this hyperspace galaxy:
1. It's relatively easy to create wormholes thru it from our dimension back to our dimension.
2. It's much more difficult to open a tear into hyperspace and navigate hyperspace directly. Though it can be done with special navigational beacons or at soft spots.
3. Distance is not 1:1 in hyperspace to our dimensional space. Neither is speed nor time. atomic forces are roughly the same but gravity and it's relationship to the fabric of hyperspace is different.
4. empty space is foggy in appearance, but this does not create friction ...the fog is displayed by matter. Matter creates gravity but gravity can also flow in currents rather than acting as points you are being pulled towards, gravity can stretch it's attractive pull along lines that flow between stars and stellar bodies in a manner similar to magnetic fields.
5. It's much harder to get from hyperspace to our dimensional space anywhere except in soft spots. Soft spots correspond to locations of stars in our dimension. The cartographical translations are incredibly complex (requiring the beacons) to track the positions of specific stellar bodies in our dimension. There is an exception to this however, nebulas. Nebulas act as extreme soft spots allowing much easier detection of dimensional anomalies needed to determine how to open a tear into our dimension safely. You can come across soft spots by random chance ..but you have no way of identifying what that spot is without a nav beacon.
6. Objects from our dimension bleed energy when in hyperspace. Energy that it cannot get back at the same rate it is losing it. Our matter though similar, loses an unequal amount of energy when interacting with hyperspace in any way. Acting both as an easy to identify object while it has energy and as a time limit for how long one can remain in hyperspace. And our engines, cannot process hyperspace's version of hydrogen properly. Many ships and even stations have been lost in the hyperspace currents due to this.

What this means for thargoids:
Thargoids home is in hyperspace. This behavior of hyperspace explains their infatuation with nebulas, why they haven't advanced in millions of years, and what they're doing with barnacles and the like. They're mining matter in our universe and converting it into an exotic, exceptionally rare form of matter for their needs to correct the damage caused by frequent wormhole creation. This is why they made their appearances when they did, it corresponded to the testing and use of certain means of hyperspace travel. While millions of years have passed in our universe since the guardians, only a few hundred years has passed for the thargoids. And the AI machines that their enemy used to drive them back couldn't survive in hyperspace for long, they were able to create some damage that took a while to repair, so there hasn't been much time to develop before humans came around to create new disturbances via their jump drives.

Thargoid's processing of meta-alloys into shields and buildings etc, reflects dangerous particles generated by dimensional wormholes. It also is used as a supplement in their own blood and their ships to survive long term exposure in our universe, protecting their bodies like sunscreen protects human skin.

What this means for exploration:
exploring hyperspace is incredibly dangerous. Unlike exploration in our galaxy, it's impossible to know what shape the hyperspace galaxy is due to the opaqueness of space. Stars do not light up the background, but rather radiation and gravitational eddies cause the dustiness of hyperspace to glow and shimmer and fade.
Adept explorers can use this behavior to determine information about the hyperspace around them and the dangers they face.
You can't jump system to system in hyperspace. And sometimes multiple systems within our galaxy will open up into the same "system" in hyperspace, just in different locations. Sometimes you can open a tear in different places of the same normal-dimensional system and appear in different hyperdimensional systems.

Gravitational eddies are extremely dangerous and can pull a ship off course and can drain energy much faster than normal.
There is no supercruise in hyperspace.
ancient wrecks and more modern debris could be found in certain areas of hyperspace.
Other hazards are found in hyperspace but also scanning hyperspace objects are very lucrative.
Finding planets in hyperspace cannot be done by sensors, since scanner data doesn't function correctly at range with all of the gravitational/em interference. You must recognize the behavior of the colors and flashing in the hyperspace dust around you, letting the environment hint at what's nearby ... and also get lucky.
Raxxla is in hyperspace
Thargoids could be found anywhere in hyperspace but some will ignore you, some will be hostile. Not all thargoids in hyperspace are militaristic in nature ...unlike the ones we encounter in our dimension.
You cannot land on or approach planets too closely in hyperspace.
There are massive life forms in hyperspace existing in space ..some peaceful, some hostile. You can be eaten. or You could pick up parasites. Hyperspace life forms do not cross over into our normal dimension.
You can deploy personal nav beacons in hyperspace if you have them equipped. but they only last a day or two and are keyed only to you or your squad or wing.
It's extremely suggested that you do not exit the game in hyperspace since you may end up not getting back into the game until later when your beacon has expired. Leaving you potentially unable to re-identify any soft spots to return to our dimension.

There is no system or galaxy map while in hyperspace. Instead, your contact list is how you navigate to things you can't readily see. Most objects only appear here if very close, but beacons can be detected infinitely away. though those that are light years away are likely in different hyperspace systems and hyperspace systems are always bordered by gravitational currents that are impassible to our ships except thru specific currents that go to a neighboring system. Travelling these is how old ships traveled. Travelling on these will result in a loading screen as you fast-travel to the next system on one of these currents. This visually looks like a blurring and stretching of hyperspace before returning to normal. No additional fuel is used other than what you use all the time to sustain your ship in hyperspace.


Mining Trade?
you can mine certain elements in hyperspace, however they are highly reactive and require special cargo racks made with meta alloys to allow safe interaction with our dimensional matter. These elements are highly valuable in creating special hull plating that can resist the depletion of energy while in hyperspace. You can purchase this hull plating via completing manufacturing missions that request a certain amount of material and credits to reward you with the module. This is not insurable. A lot of material is needed to make various sized hulls for different ships and not all players can take the time and risk to mine it in hyperspace so there will be a huge player market. The material cannot be stored in carriers due to the need for meta alloy cargo racks. Other trade might be possible thru non-hostile thargoids if only we could determine how to initiate trade with them ...

Other less exotic elements are found in different quantities and concentrations in hyperspace. however, these elements need to be processed within a certain time frame based on leaving hyperspace as they will behave as if radioactive in our dimensional space. Dosing these elements in a special refinery allows them to be stable and identical to our commodities. These stations are limited though.... the refining process a reverse engineered mechanical version of barnacle biology. Still, the profits can be significant to those skilled enough to survive acquiring the materials and able to reach these refineries as some of the most rare elements in our dimension are common (relatively) in hyperspace.

CG's can be setup to construct such refineries in different places across the galaxy.
These refineries only purchase hyperspace sourced material.


What does dying mean in hyperspace:
Your life pod can breach a tiny tear into our dimension even without a soft spot, returning to the station it needs to. Your ship or the wreckage of it however, will be identified as being lost in hyperspace and contribute to the RNG factor of finding wreckage in a given hyperspace system.

tldr:
This would allow elite to have a significantly more difficult tier of exploration, mining and even trade without changing the existing mechanics. This would marry thargoids lore with thargoids implementation. This would create a lot of new gameplay without the limitations of realistic simulation without losing the realistic simulation that already exists. This would allow rebalancing of the overall game to leverage the higher difficulty and higher income made available by hyperspace activity so that inflation and the incentive to grind easy repetitive tasks can be lessened or eliminated. And it would look cool and add infinite more mystery

 

[Gordon Freeman IV]

What if fdev fleshed out hyperspace?

Hyperspace has a lot written about it in elite books that do not correlate to the game. What if fdev resolved that disconnect and gave us something awesome that would solve many issues all at once?

Proposal: Hyperspace is a second iteration of the stellar forge with new physical constraints entered ...creating a truly alien "galaxy" superimposed on ours.

Aspects of this hyperspace galaxy:
1. It's relatively easy to create wormholes thru it from our dimension back to our dimension.
2. It's much more difficult to open a tear into hyperspace and navigate hyperspace directly. Though it can be done with special navigational beacons or at soft spots.
3. Distance is not 1:1 in hyperspace to our dimensional space. Neither is speed nor time. atomic forces are roughly the same but gravity and it's relationship to the fabric of hyperspace is different.
4. empty space is foggy in appearance, but this does not create friction ...the fog is displayed by matter. Matter creates gravity but gravity can also flow in currents rather than acting as points you are being pulled towards, gravity can stretch it's attractive pull along lines that flow between stars and stellar bodies in a manner similar to magnetic fields.
5. It's much harder to get from hyperspace to our dimensional space anywhere except in soft spots. Soft spots correspond to locations of stars in our dimension. The cartographical translations are incredibly complex (requiring the beacons) to track the positions of specific stellar bodies in our dimension. There is an exception to this however, nebulas. Nebulas act as extreme soft spots allowing much easier detection of dimensional anomalies needed to determine how to open a tear into our dimension safely. You can come across soft spots by random chance ..but you have no way of identifying what that spot is without a nav beacon.
6. Objects from our dimension bleed energy when in hyperspace. Energy that it cannot get back at the same rate it is losing it. Our matter though similar, loses an unequal amount of energy when interacting with hyperspace in any way. Acting both as an easy to identify object while it has energy and as a time limit for how long one can remain in hyperspace. And our engines, cannot process hyperspace's version of hydrogen properly. Many ships and even stations have been lost in the hyperspace currents due to this.

What this means for thargoids:
Thargoids home is in hyperspace. This behavior of hyperspace explains their infatuation with nebulas, why they haven't advanced in millions of years, and what they're doing with barnacles and the like. They're mining matter in our universe and converting it into an exotic, exceptionally rare form of matter for their needs to correct the damage caused by frequent wormhole creation. This is why they made their appearances when they did, it corresponded to the testing and use of certain means of hyperspace travel. While millions of years have passed in our universe since the guardians, only a few hundred years has passed for the thargoids. And the AI machines that their enemy used to drive them back couldn't survive in hyperspace for long, they were able to create some damage that took a while to repair, so there hasn't been much time to develop before humans came around to create new disturbances via their jump drives.

Thargoid's processing of meta-alloys into shields and buildings etc, reflects dangerous particles generated by dimensional wormholes. It also is used as a supplement in their own blood and their ships to survive long term exposure in our universe, protecting their bodies like sunscreen protects human skin.

What this means for exploration:
exploring hyperspace is incredibly dangerous. Unlike exploration in our galaxy, it's impossible to know what shape the hyperspace galaxy is due to the opaqueness of space. Stars do not light up the background, but rather radiation and gravitational eddies cause the dustiness of hyperspace to glow and shimmer and fade.
Adept explorers can use this behavior to determine information about the hyperspace around them and the dangers they face.
You can't jump system to system in hyperspace. And sometimes multiple systems within our galaxy will open up into the same "system" in hyperspace, just in different locations. Sometimes you can open a tear in different places of the same normal-dimensional system and appear in different hyperdimensional systems.

Gravitational eddies are extremely dangerous and can pull a ship off course and can drain energy much faster than normal.
There is no supercruise in hyperspace.
ancient wrecks and more modern debris could be found in certain areas of hyperspace.
Other hazards are found in hyperspace but also scanning hyperspace objects are very lucrative.
Finding planets in hyperspace cannot be done by sensors, since scanner data doesn't function correctly at range with all of the gravitational/em interference. You must recognize the behavior of the colors and flashing in the hyperspace dust around you, letting the environment hint at what's nearby ... and also get lucky.
Raxxla is in hyperspace
Thargoids could be found anywhere in hyperspace but some will ignore you, some will be hostile. Not all thargoids in hyperspace are militaristic in nature ...unlike the ones we encounter in our dimension.
You cannot land on or approach planets too closely in hyperspace.
There are massive life forms in hyperspace existing in space ..some peaceful, some hostile. You can be eaten. or You could pick up parasites. Hyperspace life forms do not cross over into our normal dimension.
You can deploy personal nav beacons in hyperspace if you have them equipped. but they only last a day or two and are keyed only to you or your squad or wing.
It's extremely suggested that you do not exit the game in hyperspace since you may end up not getting back into the game until later when your beacon has expired. Leaving you potentially unable to re-identify any soft spots to return to our dimension.

There is no system or galaxy map while in hyperspace. Instead, your contact list is how you navigate to things you can't readily see. Most objects only appear here if very close, but beacons can be detected infinitely away. though those that are light years away are likely in different hyperspace systems and hyperspace systems are always bordered by gravitational currents that are impassible to our ships except thru specific currents that go to a neighboring system. Travelling these is how old ships traveled. Travelling on these will result in a loading screen as you fast-travel to the next system on one of these currents. This visually looks like a blurring and stretching of hyperspace before returning to normal. No additional fuel is used other than what you use all the time to sustain your ship in hyperspace.


Mining Trade?
you can mine certain elements in hyperspace, however they are highly reactive and require special cargo racks made with meta alloys to allow safe interaction with our dimensional matter. These elements are highly valuable in creating special hull plating that can resist the depletion of energy while in hyperspace. You can purchase this hull plating via completing manufacturing missions that request a certain amount of material and credits to reward you with the module. This is not insurable. A lot of material is needed to make various sized hulls for different ships and not all players can take the time and risk to mine it in hyperspace so there will be a huge player market. The material cannot be stored in carriers due to the need for meta alloy cargo racks. Other trade might be possible thru non-hostile thargoids if only we could determine how to initiate trade with them ...

Other less exotic elements are found in different quantities and concentrations in hyperspace. however, these elements need to be processed within a certain time frame based on leaving hyperspace as they will behave as if radioactive in our dimensional space. Dosing these elements in a special refinery allows them to be stable and identical to our commodities. These stations are limited though.... the refining process a reverse engineered mechanical version of barnacle biology. Still, the profits can be significant to those skilled enough to survive acquiring the materials and able to reach these refineries as some of the most rare elements in our dimension are common (relatively) in hyperspace.

CG's can be setup to construct such refineries in different places across the galaxy.
These refineries only purchase hyperspace sourced material.


What does dying mean in hyperspace:
Your life pod can breach a tiny tear into our dimension even without a soft spot, returning to the station it needs to. Your ship or the wreckage of it however, will be identified as being lost in hyperspace and contribute to the RNG factor of finding wreckage in a given hyperspace system.

tldr:
This would allow elite to have a significantly more difficult tier of exploration, mining and even trade without changing the existing mechanics. This would marry thargoids lore with thargoids implementation. This would create a lot of new gameplay without the limitations of realistic simulation without losing the realistic simulation that already exists. This would allow rebalancing of the overall game to leverage the higher difficulty and higher income made available by hyperspace activity so that inflation and the incentive to grind easy repetitive tasks can be lessened or eliminated. And it would look cool and add infinite more mystery

I love this

 

[Darth Ender]

This is what happens when you stop the meds

Nah, this is probably the best compromise that can be made to provide a secondary tier to difficulty and secondary tier to income rate without upsetting the casual players of the current game who dont mind the repetition of the existing safe game loops and roles.

Instead of making some systems harder and arguing with the "it has to be a realistic simulation" players or alienating the players outright who are risk-adverse or bad at playing the game. We get this hyperspace environment that exists outside of our realistic physics and entirely avoidable to casual players looking to stay that way. Unchaining fdev's handcuffs on what they can and can't do in space and not having to grandfather in any existing gameplay mechanics that limit how difficult or risky they can be. While adding more than a few entirely unique gameplay loops that are a byproduct of the different environment. (edit, as well as taking off all handcuffs for artistic and stylistic design ).

It goes a long way towards closing a gap in gameplay that veteran players have in the game, as well as something to deepen the waters without drowning players who can't swim in a way that doesn't conflict with any existing playerbase sub-group.

 

[Tividar]

...
6. Objects from our dimension bleed energy when in hyperspace. Energy that it cannot get back at the same rate it is losing it. Our matter though similar, loses an unequal amount of energy when interacting with hyperspace in any way. Acting both as an easy to identify object while it has energy and as a time limit for how long one can remain in hyperspace. And our engines, cannot process hyperspace's version of hydrogen properly. Many ships and even stations have been lost in the hyperspace currents due to this.
...
What does dying mean in hyperspace:
Your life pod can breach a tiny tear into our dimension even without a soft spot, returning to the station it needs to. Your ship or the wreckage of it however, will be identified as being lost in hyperspace and contribute to the RNG factor of finding wreckage in a given hyperspace system.
...

I like the basic idea, but two comments. First, violating conservation of energy has some pretty huge consequences that I don't think you're addressing. Isaac Asimov touched on this possibility in the book The Gods Themselves. A simple fix would be to have the energy accumulate in the hyperspace bubble surrounding the ship while in hyperspace and discharge somewhat explosively shortly after the ship exits super-cruise and returns to regular space. That discharge might function similarly to a Thargoid Shutdown Field, affecting the CMDRs ship and anything nearby (and also mitigated by a Shutdown field neutralizer).

Second, you appear to imply a CMDR would permanently lose a ship lost in hyperspace. There's no non-meta reason for treating the loss of a ship in hyperspace any differently than a lost ship in any other dangerous place. Whatever other consequences come from losing your ship in hyperspace, it should not result in lost modules/engineering/ships - at least no more so than what currently happens.

As an alternative to the whole "I'm metal 'cause I want ship perma-death" thing, I'd like to see a POI generated salvage mission that'd give you the opportunity to literally fly out to the wreckage of your ship and salvage it.

 

[Darth Ender]

I like the basic idea, but two comments. First, violating conservation of energy has some pretty huge consequences that I don't think you're addressing. Isaac Asimov touched on this possibility in the book The Gods Themselves. A simple fix would be to have the energy accumulate in the hyperspace bubble surrounding the ship while in hyperspace and discharge somewhat explosively shortly after the ship exits super-cruise and returns to regular space. That discharge might function similarly to a Thargoid Shutdown Field, affecting the CMDRs ship and anything nearby (and also mitigated by a Shutdown field neutralizer).

I dont disagree with the idea of a discharge that affects things that way...but which part violates the conservation of energy? Opening a tear from our dimension into hyperspace for non-wormhole travel or opening a tear from there to our our dimension ? or the fact that they're not equal energies?

My idea for them not being equal had to do with the idea that maybe hyperspace is easier to open in our end because it must expand the dimension so that it is large enough to enter while on the other side, the problem is different once over there though. The dimension doesn't need energy to expand a curled up dimension, but rather a means of concentrating a dimension with a field that is larger than the visible universe. This dimension has significantly lower energy and requires much more to concentrate the dimensional opening. That one takes more energy than ours since there's near infinitely more of the curled up dimension to work with.

Second, you appear to imply a CMDR would permanently lose a ship lost in hyperspace. There's no non-meta reason for treating the loss of a ship in hyperspace any differently than a lost ship in any other dangerous place. Whatever other consequences come from losing your ship in hyperspace, it should not result in lost modules/engineering/ships - at least no more so than what currently happens.

not permanently lose a ship. Permanently lose the special hull (if you upgraded to it) Your ship and other modules would be insurable ..just not the fabricated special hull.

As an alternative to the whole "I'm metal 'cause I want ship perma-death" thing, I'd like to see a POI generated salvage mission that'd give you the opportunity to literally fly out to the wreckage of your ship and salvage it.

The point isn't to be hardcore, just to ensure you dont build once and have forever. It creates an importance to the hull, a risk you could lose that you care about because it's not replaceable with worthless credits.

 

[Tividar]

I dont disagree with the idea of a discharge that affects things that way...but which part violates the conservation of energy? Opening a tear from our dimension into hyperspace for non-wormhole travel or opening a tear from there to our our dimension ? or the fact that they're not equal energies?

My idea for them not being equal had to do with the idea that maybe hyperspace is easier to open in our end because it must expand the dimension so that it is large enough to enter while on the other side, the problem is different once over there though. The dimension doesn't need energy to expand a curled up dimension, but rather a means of concentrating a dimension with a field that is larger than the visible universe. This dimension has significantly lower energy and requires much more to concentrate the dimensional opening. That one takes more energy than ours since there's near infinitely more of the curled up dimension to work with.


not permanently lose a ship. Permanently lose the special hull (if you upgraded to it) Your ship and other modules would be insurable ..just not the fabricated special hull.


The point isn't to be hardcore, just to ensure you dont build once and have forever. It creates an importance to the hull, a risk you could lose that you care about because it's not replaceable with worthless credits.

Apologies if I jumped the gun on ship loss. Losing a single module (in effect) wouldn't need to be too onerous, but I'd prefer the insurance/loss mechanism was consistent for both real-space and hyperspace. As far as the conservation of energy issue, I was focused on the idea that "Objects from our dimension bleed energy when in hyperspace." In effect, this is a one-way energy pump from our universe to Hyperspace. Within our universe, conservation of energy would no-long be a constant. Problem solved if the energy bled from the ship is ultimately returned to our universe. I like the idea that the shutdown field might be (in part) a function of the transition between real and hyper space that the Thargoids weaponized (possibly in response to the viral bomb).

Ships that conduct operations in Witchspace will be more attractive targets for pirates (more valuable cargo), and will already been in a weakened state due to the bleed effect. Starting an interdiction with a shutdown field effect would add another element to the interaction.

 

[Darth Ender]

Apologies if I jumped the gun on ship loss. Losing a single module (in effect) wouldn't need to be too onerous, but I'd prefer the insurance/loss mechanism was consistent for both real-space and hyperspace. As far as the conservation of energy issue, I was focused on the idea that "Objects from our dimension bleed energy when in hyperspace." In effect, this is a one-way energy pump from our universe to Hyperspace. Within our universe, conservation of energy would no-long be a constant. Problem solved if the energy bled from the ship is ultimately returned to our universe. I like the idea that the shutdown field might be (in part) a function of the transition between real and hyper space that the Thargoids weaponized (possibly in response to the viral bomb).

I'd love to apply insureless loss of engineered things in normal space, but i fear that kind of change would be something fdev never agrees to do given they've already allowed such things to be insured.

So i fear such things are limited to this new feature

I dont have a problem with doing something with the energy that leaches out of our universe's ships. Would be interesting to have the energy cluster around and accumulate over time. Making it harder to not just operate but see.

Ships that conduct operations in Witchspace will be more attractive targets for pirates (more valuable cargo), and will already been in a weakened state due to the bleed effect. Starting an interdiction with a shutdown field effect would add another element to the interaction.

indeed, but I would leverage the environmental hazards more so than npc pirates ...since I'd like to make more use of the 400 billion systems in the game and not rely on just the thousand or so in inhabited ones for gameplay. But yes, any hyperspace material would theoretically give a signature that pirates might be able to track and really care about stealing compared to regular stuff. Also those special refineries would be high profile targets, despite being more secure than regular stations.