Local hyperspace / time acceleration Speculation / questions

[Winterdyne]

Been thinking about multiplayer. For me this is a big plus, I like cooperative gaming. The downside is we can't have player-subjective time in a multiplayer environment. So, no Stardreamer.

This impacts a few things that set Elite / Frontier apart.

First is the influence of orbital dynamics on travel. This basically goes out of the window. Sorry guys, but frankly I won't miss it.

Second is watching the day / night cycle. Not sure if rotational speed of planetary bodies (base time flow) should be increased to allow this. I think a GTA style accelerated day/weather cycle is a good idea. If I want to watch the weather pass in real time, I'll look out the window.

Third is time compression for long distance travel. It was always really cool to see Earth dwindle in the rear view, or skim rings etc. There has to be some sort of free flight mechanism in place to allow this. DB mentioned local hyperspace.

So is local hyperspace going to be a jump or super fast real space method of movement? How is deceleration and collision detection/avoidance going to be handled? Very large proximity, based on relative velocities? I suspect something based on gravitational effect to be more likely if less realistic (super fast things will pass through small mass objects freely) but be decelerated if coming into range of a large mass. What are others thoughts on this?

 

[Kipper]

I've thought about this a little bit too.

There shouldn't a problem with no time compression as long as there is a way to get to places fast, given the scale of space and solar systems.

We know already that there is going to be a local hyperspace - which sounds to me like the original 'jump drive' idea, which was fine. You travel in real space but at exceptionally high speed to overcome the distances.

I'd hope that the visual effect of this when watching someone else from a stationary ship would be something akin to Star Trek or the old X-Wing games, where the ship suddenly speeds up and flashes off into the distance. As long as you can see ships going into, and coming out of this hyperspace and recognise it as something different to actual hyperspace to another system then great. (I liked hyperspace clouds for inter-system travel, the idea could be expanded upon?)

There does seem to be a problem with this however even with multiplayer.

If it's completely PvE, you'll still need a way to be able to keep a group together so that you don't all local-jump off in slightly different directions, or in the same direction but a split second apart - meaning you don't all arrive at an 'encounter' together. That shouldn't be too difficult. You could either have a group jump that everyone opts into and you all leave together, or you could just have to communicate ... a few seconds difference shouldn't matter as long as people have time to get their bearings when arriving at a situation, but direction matters as over vast distances, a tiny difference at the start could be hundreds of thousands of miles at the end of a long jump.

The second and more difficult problem is if the game involves any PvP, which we don't know yet. If you're effectively not in play when you're doing local hyperspacing, how do fights start? You'll arrive at the outer edge of a system (presumably) at which point you could be attacked, but presumably unless you 'follow' someone into hyperspace using the cloud system, you couldn't know where people will arrive, and space being big - running someone down before they can jump will be unlikely.

By the time they come out of a jump, they'll be at the destination very close to, or within safe space around a station. So you have more chance of seeing and intercepting people here, but also more chance of being blown up by police ships or other players.

How can you stop someone jumping, or force someone out of a jump to enable this sort of play, and what are considerations are there for fairness?

 

[Jokester]

I would still hope that physics is still correct as regards gravity and orbital motion etc, so you could just sit there for a few hours and watch things move around if you wanted.

My understanding will be that it will be the original Elite model, where you use a jumpdrive to move across local space at extremely high speed (it would need to effectively be substantially faster than the speed of light if the same scale of space is kept like Frontier - I hope this is the case). Jumpdrive travel will be disrupted if asteroids, space stations, space craft etc are in your vicinity like how it worked in Elite. Once out of jump drive you would just be moving about at slow speed using thrusters in combat or to dock, land etc.

 

[SuperG]

I don;t see a problem. They will come with a solution by playtesting an iterate trough there choice and fine tune the rules anad balance. Where it doesn't brake the game.

But expect with Mplay not the excact game mechanic can be slapped in from the older games. That unavoidable. But they can tweak it in either direction. Sure some people will have a problem with it but most people not.
Playtesters aren't the average gamers but give some early feedback.
alfa stage sure not so average but wenn beta most of it will be ironed out.

I also think it is not set in stone as it is in to early stage.

 

[DraQ]

I see a number of problems with local hyperspace.

1) Consistency of setting. Frontier is one of the very few examples where there is an effective star drive that couldn't be easily turned into ludicrously powerful weapon, all thanks to its inherent inaccuracy. The problem is that local jumps have to be accurate. You now have unavoidable, undetectable missiles that can be fitted with any warheads, unavoidable troop insertions and so on.

2) Dynamics of the setting. If you can get anywhere in the system in less than a minute, it means that the police can too. Effectively no place in the system is further out than just outside the docking bay. I played I-War 2 and if I had to pick one thing about it that completely sucked it would be this.
It was also far more tedious to travel in it than it was in Frontier because it had to limit your travel speed in order for distance to retain any meaning. With time compression it's not a factor, because it doesn't affect the dynamics of the gameworld as time flies faster for everyone.

3) Sense of distance. Not only does newtonian motion add to sense of distance, it also introduces entirely new kinds of it. For example let's say there is a guy in a broken ship losing air mere 1km away. Is it close? Not when you're buzzing past at over a hundred km/s.

Now, I'd see two ways out.

First is making local hyperdrive MP-exclusive and allowing time compression in SP. Time compression doesn't really require much testing and extra coding, so why not?

Second, harder, and limited only to relatively small coop games, would be an attempt to make sort of consensus time compression. The key idea is to time compress only when it's possibly to re-sync the players.
It would be based on splitting the detailed representation of the gameworld into player specific instances. As long as those instances would remain well separated and no player actions would be able to propagate into each other it would allow for normal time compression (it would mitigate time discrepancy, because as it would grow, the instances would have further reach). Otherwise the time compression would have to be synchronous.
Apart from normal time compression settings it would be possible to 'snap' to the leader's (the player with highest time) timeframe, with all local changes applying to player based on calculated time.

Not sure if rotational speed of planetary bodies (base time flow) should be increased to allow this. I think a GTA style accelerated day/weather cycle is a good idea.

It's never a good idea in a simulation game. I don't even like it in RPGs.

 

[DrBaggy]

Draq!!!! Welcome back!! I think we have the complete set of us "old-timers" (I'm certainly one, no offence intended to others) from the forum

 

[Jokester]

Time compression inherently doesn't work in MP, the only way to deal with it is ti allow extremely fast travel speeds, with some sort of interuption mechanism to deal with MP aspects.

But yeah, I hate accelerated day/night cycles. WoW got this right, pretty much every other MMO got it wrong. If I log on at night, I want it to be night, I don't want it to be day.

In Elite 4, I want an Earth day to be 24 hours, no less.

 

[SuperG]

Don't understand this fixation on stardreamer. Is it a drug.
Profesional devs stick to keep player in the same place in time.
They working out a gameplay that is in less need of time acceleration but still keeps true to newtownian physics. It can be done in many different ways, they playtest what works out or not and choose for the best solution.

Also keep in mind they work out the netcode system of the gameengine. So I expect they did had some thoughts on it.

I also guess that what the pledging crowed of mojority wishes in there special feedback forum. Frontier wil follow if there is a design choice to make. Also bit on the regular forums.

 

[Winterdyne]

SuperG, the reason people go on about the Stardreamer is because it let you do orbital transfers, slingshot manoeuvres etc, that are realistic space flight techniques. It also let you watch orbital behaviour etc. these were a big part of what set Frontier apart. We know DB has a plan and at the end of the day he'll do what he feels is best. Many of us will already have stumped up cash because we trust his decisions. This thread is just for speculating as i personally feel it'll be a significant change to what was done before. From a design point of view it's non trivial.

Simple jumping within a system is all well and good but doesn't help with the feeling of vastness. It just makes 'levels' smaller.

An issue is that the alternative is effectively extreme relative velocities. Velocities so fast that relatively slower moving players would never see you coming (hence my suggestion of not bothering with collision detection on them). This also implies that a cap would have to be placed on ordinary velocities which breaks the Newtonian flight model somewhat.

What should Hyperspatial velocity be relative to? Nearest major body? Gravitational centres?

 

[Kipper]

I hadn't considered the point of other things moving - its true that with time compression, everything would be on its own orbital trajectory and it would still take days or weeks to get to distant objects, just that you didn't need to actually wait days or weeks.

With local jumpdrive and no time compression, travel times will be seconds to a minute, and nothing large will have moved perceptibly in that time. Also, presumably the jump to 'ludicrous speed' will be near instant, as will slowing back down to thruster speed.

In that regard it does mean that orbital maneuvers won't be possible (or if possible, not practical) which in itself, I could live without.

It does also seem to suggest that combat will be more 'Elite' than 'Frontier' and personally, combat was always the more disappointing thing in the sequels - I wanted more X-Wing style, and at normal speeds - although I would totally welcome some inertia differentiate from a 'fighter jet' sim. (Manual thruster control optional again, but otherwise thrusters aim to propel you 'forward' relative to the front view).

The major minus point though is that it could easily end up making systems feel tiny which is a really, really bad thing. You'll drop out of inter-system hyperspace, set a course which might take 20 seconds fiddling with the map, enter local jump and in a few more seconds you're arriving at your destination.

How do you explore?

Being forced out of a jump by a random 'encounter' with another ship, asteroid, or other object is obviously on the cards, but what I always wanted to be able to do was to properly create the encounters I had - see other ships, be able to intercept them, to see asteroid fields and explicitly travel to them.

Maybe some sort of long range scanner would help identify things of interest other than bases? With a much shorter range scanner to actually put some detail on them?

 

[Jokester]

I think the speeds that the jumpdrive give you would need to be of the same scale as the accelerated time effect gave you in Elite 2. I can't remember how long it took in real time to get from the hyperspace arrival point to a base, but it was something like 1 minute or so?

 

[Kipper]

I think the speeds that the jumpdrive give you would need to be of the same scale as the accelerated time effect gave you in Elite 2. I can't remember how long it took in real time to get from the hyperspace arrival point to a base, but it was something like 1 minute or so?

The difference being that travel time was not a minute - it might have been a week, you just compressed one week into one minute. The positions and rotations of all of the stellar bodies were one week further along their route than they had been before you hit the button. The prices in the market were different because a whole week of trading had happened by the time you arrived, and so on.

With local jump (which is the only way because time compression is not possible on multiplayer) - travel time won't be a week in a minute, it will be a minute in a minute. Effectively, you're moving MUCH faster and doing so in real time.

If Frontier were multiplayer and you wanted to intercept a guy leaving Earth on a certain date, timing would be everything - you'd have to arrive in the system 3 or 4 days in advance or you'd miss him.

With local jumps - you could hyperspace in, arrive in the orbit of Pluto, your target could undock with Earth 60 seconds from now and you could travel that distance in that time to intercept him.

 

[Jokester]

Yes, but it only took you the player a minute in the real world, that's my point. The effect of losing the time compression isn't a major issue for me at all, as everything else will still work, you can still intercept people, stockmarkets will still be dynamic, possibly more so now with other people buying and selling. The only thing that's broken is the ability to turn off your engines and slingshot round planets, something which wasn't a key game mechanic, just something that was a result of the accuracy of the physics model.

Edit: Saying that, I might just miss sitting there on a surface port whilst fully accelerated and watching the universe go by. An offline mode would be good idea to allow that sort of effect.

 

[Kipper]

Well, the ability to do those physics related things technically ought still to be there, just that you'll have to do it in realtime which would just be too much for 99.9% of people.

Still, I agree with you that there won't be too much difference in the rest of it. You'll still arrive in the outer system, still set your course for a base further in, and still accelerate yourself towards it and stop when you arrive.

Combat wise it should be an improvement, because you should come out of 'jump' at thruster speed and so it will be more jet fighter and less weird jousting.

The possible loss is that it might just make everything feel small because distance is almost completely irrelevant, and of course, you wouldn't be able to marvel at the universe doing its thing since it would all happen in real-time.

It could be very good in other ways though; because what you could end up with is a pretty realistic simulation that allows us all to be space pilots and get an idea of what the future might really have in store - something we can't actually do for real, and aren't likely to do in our lifetimes.

 

[Winterdyne]

An interesting mechanic might be to make 'hyper speed' illegal in certain areas (ie the immediate vicinity of stations or planetary atmospheres). Intercepting and avoiding interception could then be a test of a player's judgement in shutting off the local hyperdrive. Too close and a hefty fine or wanted state, too far out and you're vulnerable to pirates or those trying to intercept you. This would also help hide the necessary absence of collision detection on hyper-fast objects as you'd be going to or from normal speed in pretty open space.

Extremely densely packed spaces ( planetary rings, debris fields, asteroid belts) could be impossible to hyper speed in - the ships computer just says 'no, you loon', and drops you to thruster power. This would give asteroid bases a real tactical advantage and some flavour. Itd be difficult to pull of heavy strikes on them as ships would need to power in for some distance at normal speed and thus get detected or intercepted... Or you could just make collision ( at hyper speed) with such volumes of space fatal. Saves tracking multiple small objects against very fast objects which are likely to pass through them in a single step of the physics engine, or using expanding collision volumes based on velocity...

 

[DraQ]

Yes, but it only took you the player a minute in the real world, that's my point. The effect of losing the time compression isn't a major issue for me at all, as everything else will still work

The thing is that everything else will work differently.

Time compression is effectively just a tedium reducing measure. It can be arbitrarily fast because it only affects your perception of time - how game time translates to player time. It doesn't have any mechanical effects in game, because it speeds everything up equally, so, for example if you attack a trader (or are attacked yourself) at the outskirts of the system help won't arrive until days after the battle has resolved.

Now, in-system jump drive is not just a tedium reducing feature, it's a game mechanics and its tedium reducing side must be balanced against the gameplay impact. For example, jump-drive's speed will also dictate the time in which help can arrive - if you can travel from the outskirts of system in minute, this is how long it will take for the police to arrive once you shoot up someone or get shot up yourself (and with travel times on this order - less than in today's city - they won't have any reason to not arive). It will dictate how in-game events and travel times interplay. It will allow small force to easily patrol large area. Finally, if, say, 10AU is going to take about 1 minute to traverse, then there are systems that will take you around an hour of sitting there and staring into the screen to finally reach your destination - ouch.

It's not just orbital manoeuvres that will be lost, the entire dynamics of the game will be shot AND the game will also be much more tedious than it would be with just conventional drives and time compression.

I understand that in multi jumpdrive is effectively a necessary evil, but why not disable it in single and allow time compression instead?

 

[Winterdyne]

We still don't know if the local hyperspace is a 'go super fast' or 'jump in system' method. If the former, then it can be kept interesting by having various other dynamics (as I mention above) affect it, as well as various categories of drive affecting the speed. If the latter... I dunno. That would be dull.

 

[DraQ]

We still don't know if the local hyperspace is a 'go super fast' or 'jump in system' method. If the former, then it can be kept interesting by having various other dynamics (as I mention above) affect it, as well as various categories of drive affecting the speed. If the latter... I dunno. That would be dull.

Yeah, but in both cases the game dynamics would mainly be decided by how fast you can go from A to B.

 

[Winterdyne]

Indeed; with jumping around in system though, you definitely lose a lot of the sense of scale. I really hope it doesn't go that way; I want to jump in at the edge of a system and power in, and choose a sensible route into the inner system that avoids known pirate haunts (direct lines between planets / moons for example).

Perhaps have the local fast travel method use fuel so there's a reason to skip to the nearest starport and travel in on 'known routes'. Those wishing to take off-path routes in should then bring extra fuel or something...

 

[Kipper]

I kind of hope it's "warp speed" not "hyperspace" within a system.

For me, hyperspace is a wormhole that a ship can open all by itself and use to shortcut across many light years. It leads to effects such as the 'hyperspace cloud' from Frontier that allows ships to track and follow each other through space, whilst still getting from A-B in human timescales.

There's no room for that inside a system, IMO.

I hope that local jump simply powers you through real space at a vast speed; so that objects in between start and destination have to be negotiated (say you arrive at Jupiter and Earth happens to be the other side of the Sun right now, you can't just warp 'through' the sun, you have to plot a route via another planet or handily placed navigation beacon.

Navigation beacons etc would make excellent piracy hotspots as ships would be dropping out of 'warp' momentarily to re-orientate themselves for another jump; and they wouldn't necessarily be protected by police Vipers as they might be a ways out from the nearest base.

Warp engines could be another component to consider upgrading to achieve quicker in system travel times, as well as hyperdrives for longer inter-system trips, and thrusters for combat/low speed manoevering.

For large multi-star systems where even warp speed might be inadequate, it shouldn't be too hard to allow you to 'target' a rough orbit with hyperspace; in a smallish system like Sol, you'd just arrive at the orbit of one of the inner or outer planets (depending how it works), but a much larger system has several choosable entry points that might take you nearer, or further away from the star(s) depending where you aim to be.