Local hyperspace / time acceleration Speculation / questions

[shrapnel]

The "warp" option, with navigation points/jump points where pirates can gather is all sounding rather similar to EVE to me.

I think it would be a stroke of genius of they come up with a way to please everyone on this. It strikes me that they should co-release two different but similar games, one MP and one SP.

Kind of like what Bethesda have done with "Elder Scrolls Online" being a whole different game mechanic, albeit in the same world as the RPG series "Elder Scrolls" games.

Of course, this would cost loads more, so unlikely.

 

[Kipper]

The "warp" option, with navigation points/jump points where pirates can gather is all sounding rather similar to EVE to me.

I see what you're saying, but I was thinking more of navigation points being something you chose or created yourself, rather than a structure in space.

Maybe based on other stations/bases/planetary bodies - so to get 'around' the sun from Venus to Earth on opposite sides due to their orbits, I might go 'via' mercury, or even something like Mars or Ceres, depending what was in the right place for me.

Thus rather than just sitting at nav beacons waiting for people to come by, people playing pirate would have to be looking at their maps and putting a little bit of thought into where people are coming in, going to, and how they're likely to get there.

I also think that moving in real space (even at high speed) would keep the impression that solar systems are big, rather than disappear/appear - and you'd get to see a lot of objects up close you might ordinarily not visit as you travel from orbit to orbit.

 

[Winterdyne]

Could give pirates / military 'roadblock' mines that prevent fast travel in a set radius (something appropriate for non-superspeed velocities). Canny pirates would spend time setting up nets of these mines across known routs to catch fat freighters, police would patrol the lines clearing such nets etc... possibilities... Also makes piracy slightly less tempting as you have an expense to catch something, which might not be what you're actually looking for...

 

[Kipper]

Could give pirates / military 'roadblock' mines that prevent fast travel in a set radius (something appropriate for non-superspeed velocities). Canny pirates would spend time setting up nets of these mines across known routs to catch fat freighters, police would patrol the lines clearing such nets etc... possibilities... Also makes piracy slightly less tempting as you have an expense to catch something, which might not be what you're actually looking for...

Interesting Also if the points people were navigating were orbital bodies, then over time the routes would change as the orbits change, so you'd have to keep adapting your strategy... maybe not every day, but over the course of a few weeks, the orbits might have moved enough that people were using a different route from the jump-in point to the main bases.

And of course traders not wanting to risk themselves might find slightly longer alternative routes too.

 

[Winterdyne]

Yeah that would work... I hope they do something like this.

 

[Talon2779]

The solution is the system in Elite 1 or like that used in I-war..
First you jump into a system at set arrival points or Lagrange points.(This is real science based,L points are areas of neutral gravity between astral bodies)
Second you set your local destination target and go to "warp".
In the first Elite they had what was called "Mass Locked" this stopped you from going to local warp or would drop you out of warp when you got to close to another object, be it a planet or ship. This would mean that for PvP you would have to make distance between an attacker before you can warp away. In I-war they also had special missiles that could knock ships out of warp and disable there drives

And some kind of auto pilot formation flying option could be used for group jumps.

 

[Mika]

My considerations about this are much more practical and about "game design" and feel.

I think with "local hyperdrive", braben really just means the mechanic used in elite 1. You know, the one where you get "mass lock" if close to any other body or ship.

This avoids escaping battles via "local hyperspace".

But there still are a bunch of questions open:

1. In elite2/3, inter-system travel cost and time, was an important aspect of calculating mission cost and if you could do it in time. How will that translate to E4? Surely, there should be a cost associated with traversing a system, because else the whole economic aspect of "profit for distance" becomes quite distorted, yes? If so, i'd expect "local hyperdrive" to consume a lot of fuel and NOT be "near instant".

2. Purely aesthetically, the time it takes to traverse a system, implies scale. If you can with just one mouseclick go from pluto to earth instantly, that severally reduces the feel of "scale" of space travel. On the other hand, we really do not want to wait 3 ingame weeks, just to reach earth. What i'm hinting at is a balance between the player falling asleep in intra-system travel, and any effort of intra-system travel seeming peanuts. I do NOT think, that such a compromise CAN satisfy "action" players. The speeds and times "action"-players would expect, would ruin any sense of "scale" of systems. Even if we were to assume, that "local hdrive" can take you from pluto to earth, in 1 minute (which really is very low, especially considering #3 below), some impatient players will complain about space travel being boringly slow.

3. Ambushes and interception. Given the sheer scale of a system, obviously it will be impossible to rendevouz with a ship (for whatever reason) via manual controls. With those large spaces, it will be impossible to "hit" a ship somewhere in the system, via manual steering. So, it has to be computers doing the rendevouz-control for you: You designate a target that is to be "intercepted", and the computer does the steering. Okay, fine - but imagine this: Lets say, you are employed among the police forces of a system. You are currently deployed around earth. Now some notorious criminal jumps into the system. First consideration: You can only "intercept" him in mid-space, if you have time to arrange for interception. If he were able to just "jump" to earth, no midspace interception could work. Okay, but just how much time will you get to set up interception? Notice that this depends on just how fast "local hyperdrive" is. Personally, i'd say "pluto to earth in 1min" is the minimum time-effort this "local hyperdrive" should take, to allow any strategic coordination. But as i wrote before: To some impatient players, even this 1min will be too slow.

TL/DR: It's all about the fuel/time effort of "local hyperdrive".... and i do not think that frontier dev will be able to make everyone happy here.