Fitorion

If using the Babylon 5 system which was just under discussion... The shipping lanes... in system... far enough from a gate and the star base which would inevitably be built to protect those going though it... but not far enough to justify a jump from a large jump engine equipped ship would be the ideal place for Raiders to "gank" people as you say... especially if the ships going from planet or planets to the gate pass by places raider ships could hide in... blend into... fool sensors with so they can escape after a hit... like asteroid fields... Volcanic moons... or other sci-fi type hazardous areas. With ships being able to be crewed... a jump engine equipped ship could have 10s to maybe even a 100 crew ... players... on board just to run it... not to mention its escort vessels... and could represent the combined wealth and efforts of thousands of players to make. All depending on how the devs implement and balance this system... if they choose to include this system at all. So 1 person isn't flying around with their big ship... it's the property of the organization and many players are involved in running it. It's still a large target though. A challenge to take down. And there will be players who relish in the attempt. Taking an inferior force and managing to take down a superior one is core to a lot of games... I'm not sure how much they actually need to do to prevent ganking... I think the goal is for players to enforce their own rules rather than have much in the way of "play nice" rules enforced by the system itself.

I'm not inventing anything. I'm describing the Babylon 5 TV shows Hyperspace System. If you didn't understand that... I have nothing really to say to you except. Go watch the show and then get back to me.

Why would a battle be going on in an uninhabited system without a gate? If someone destroyed the gate... in a system you owned you'd need to go there to rescue what remains of the populace...(since the destruction of the gate killed most of them) but if an enemy faction destroyed the gate in their own system... well they just destroyed most of the value of the system and created their own prison so... why bother? The gate system is fundamental. Any system worth fighting over has a gate. Building one is key to exploiting the resources in a system... Each gate in the system expands the number of reachable systems to explore. Destroying a gate is monumentally stupid... They are the key object in a system you want to control... not destroy. You can't just wish away the gates when it suits you. Like for like... Going to a system with gate access. Travel time to any point within the system. About equal. covers 95% of all activity. Going to a system without gate access. Possible but risky... and you'll want to bring escort ships and impossible for unequipped ships unless you join up with an expedition. Only done for exploration or extreme desperation. So you're arguing over an edge case... not a common occurrence.

What do you think the gates do? They allow the smaller cheaper ships access to hyperspace and an exit to hyperspace. They allow the lowest cheapest space capable ship you can get to travel across the known universe. The only things the jump engine quipped ships gain is a chance to catch up to the faster smaller ships (but not a guarantee) and the ability to explore gateless systems. You seem to have no grasp on this what so ever. What other fundamental parts of Babylon 5 style hyperspace have you utterly ignored? Also there's ways to limit the size of fleet one jump engine equipped ship can let in and out... 1. you could remove the ability to let anyone else in or out... so only ships physically in contact in docking bays and the like could come. 2. Limit how long it can hold the gate open. 3. Make hyperspace fog so dense and sensor inhibiting that only those within a very close distance of the ship can see it and so tell when a jump point is opened for them.

You apparently completely don't understand... You saying things like near instantaneous and thinking the big ships aren't traveling the same way all the other ships shows you don't understand. This system is specifically about making travel take time... to delay interstellar engagements and increase tactical planning and gameplay. The big ship is slower than small ships both in real space and in hyperspace... the jump engine just gets you in and out. Once in you're plodding along using the jumpgates beacons as reference just like everyone else... using your slow ass engines as the smaller ships use their smaller mass to go faster. In probably a 50/50 split you would have to travel farther or shorter a distance to get to where you wanted to exit. The ability to get out of hyperspace a little closer to the destination just even things up a bit. How you can think it makes big ships super fast mystifies me. How you can come to that conclusion... I can't fathom. I suppose you could take everything with you to every engagement... if you 1. left everywhere else undefended... inviting attacks from other factions while you deal with some piddling little raiders... 2. Waited in one spot for days as you gather your forces spread all over the place into the fleet you'll use to crush your enemy... massively telegraphing your intentions... giving them time to move... set traps... time their attack on your undefended worlds to coincide with your fool hardy plan. Getting around restrictions with resources and being able to get around more with more... Welcome to Every game ever and Real Life. A game centered around as real a depiction of interactions between people as possible is going have this mechanic. Get used to it.

Another thing to remember... Players provide the civilizations and factions and goals and obstacles to other players in this game. There isn't going to be an NPC empire to fight against... if an empire exists... it'll be player made. So if you want the heroes journey experience of starting with nothing and building up a resistance and eventually overcoming an overwhelming force... it has to be possible for an overwhelming force to be created and run by players. But there also have to be vulnerabilities built into it that smaller forces can exploit. I big jump engine quipped ship is intimidating to be sure... but won't be as fast or maneuverable in real space as smaller ships. And smaller ships could get through hyperspace using the gates faster in most cases. It also is costly to operate and can only be in one place at a time. The ability to make its own entrance and exit to hyperspace is what evens it up with the smaller ships... gives it the chance to cut off the smaller ships sometimes... but not every time. It gives it the ability to get into a system otherwise inaccessible Like if an enemy has gathered all their remaining ships for a last stand around 1 planet and disabled the local jumpgate. as bad as that is... It's also a bit like submarine warfare... not exactly like... but there are some similarities. Being in hyperspace costs... you can't just stay in there forever... At some point you have to resurface and chance being seen as you resupply... repair... recharge... There could be epic chases as the last remaining jumpengine equipped ship a faction has is chased from low population system (where it tries to process some raw material to do repairs) to neutral system (where it manages to find someone to sell them fuel) By smaller fighter and medium class ships using the gates... slowly gaining or losing ground on it as people see it and call in a report... or try to guess which system it'll head to next and try to get ahead of it.

Making them take so much effort and resources makes them rare. It means only the most massive organizations... like galacticly large controlling many systems could afford more than 1. And likely a lot of IRL time before any organizations achieves that... Just like In real life Governments have large Carrier groups and can move large quantities of military assets quickly. This hyperspace mechanic is an analog to Sea going combat. Real space is the coast line and Hyperspace with gates is the currents and prevailing winds that most ships follow to get around... and powerful ships can get around those restrictions at great expense. Which means if you attract the attention of such a ship then other parts of their territory are vulnerable. Hit and run tactics would be rather effective. Hit a place and use the gate to get back into hyperspace before the big ship and its fleet can arrive. Then high tail it a safe place to take shelter or continue to another location and hit it. force the big ship to expend resources until it to is reduced to using the gates and or has to put in for refueling. Destroying a gate is a bad idea in almost all situations. I've described in other posts about how suicidal attempting to destroy a gate is... HUGE boom. any one attempting it would not escape the blast... nor would any space station nearby or planet. It could crack a planet open if too close or cause mass ecological damage if just on the outer edge of the blast. And unless you had a jump engine equipped ship yourself... you'd be cutting off your only means of escape. But you're also ignoring the draw backs of jumping into a system not at a gate. 1. you will be vulnerable just after jumping in for a while... so you'll want to a. have escort ships and b. not jump too close to the enemy 2. If you don't have spies in the system relaying information on where the enemy fleet is or if jamming is being used... you could collide with ships if you jump too close to the planet they are attacking for instance. A certain amount of uncertainty in the exact location you'll emerge from hyperspace can and should be present. A carrier group is a large investment that you don't risk unless you have to and you don't send to far from your core territories which it is defending. This system means small scale skirmishes are common. The mid range territories see medium class fleets engage... with maybe the odd capital ship popping up here and there. The core during an all out war sees the massive capital ships duking it out... also the border... There is another thing to consider... the Fragility of space ships... Armor... hit points... whatever doesn't have to scale linearly or exponentially like Bosses in so many games do... Weapons that fighter class ships have could and probably should do effective damage even to the largest ships. Think Dark Souls... where even if you have the best weapons and armor... if you misstep... don't dodge... or make a mistake you can die pretty darn quickly... In space it should be the same. Every battle even if on paper you have a superior force should be close to disaster if you underestimate your opponent.

thanks. Darius Sanguna You seem to really get what I'm going for here. I don't understand why some others don't... I can only assume I haven't been explaining it well enough. I've been trying my best to do so.

The Gates In B5 are like 4 strings of pearls. They're spaced out kinda like a funnel. Normally they open a jump point into hyperspace big enough for their largest ships to enter and leave every time no matter the size of ship using them. Once... they did have to move the gate's arms further apart to accommodate a very large object. The gates are very efficient but not free either. Gate use fees are collected... but they are collected only at the collecting parties willingness and ableness to enforce the fees. And of course the long ass real space route is still there. I love the B5 system of hyperspace and want it completely in DU... but I'd be happy if even just a little of it influences design. I don't like point to point instant travel... especially if such travel isn't range limited. The ability to travel across all known space in an instant should not be in game. A civilization building game in an endless universe has a problem... It has to limit the rate at which people expand and it has to keep the oldest settlements relevant and populated even as the areas to populate expand. If everyone can just go out unhindered you get No Man's Sky. There has to be barriers... which take large group action to overcome to keep people in and building and using the infrastructure. The vast majority of people need to be tied to their settled location and trading with their neighbors rather than pushing to the outer reaches of known space into the unknown. The social structure features of this game only work if there are concentrated populations which don't move around too much. So a system is needed that prevents the lone wolf. MMOs today cater way to much to individual play. The leveling process in most games is a single player campaign... you don't need to rely on anyone else during it... so you don't. Old MMOs, the world outside town was scary if you were alone... there were difficulty walls you'd hit where the monster simply can't be defeated by you alone. That need for other players has to by built into the game mechanics or the population will disperse, get board, and leave.

Level of detail. You can tell only so much from orbit. With every gate built a whole swath of new systems will be accessible to a ship with a jump engine... and so demand for small contractors to join up on an expedition... So that a bunch of ships can spread out in a system and do the cursory orbital scans to find out what resources are there and roughly how much. Finding out exactly how much and where it's concentrated is a job for later... By virtue of it taking fuel to travel through hyperspace or even hold position within... you in your small ship which 90% of people have can only get to a few with out risking running out of fuel while in hyperspace and being swept away to oblivion. So... any trip across the know areas involves several hops in and out of hyperspace and a stop to refuel. And if you're stopping anyway... might as well sell some stuff... buy some stuff... check out that local flavor... you know trade. Jump engines take a lot of energy... that isn't free. How they deal with the cost could be done in several different ways. Make it cost fuel to run the generator... or a different rare element... whatever. Point is you use the gates most of the time even if you have jump engines. Even during combat operations... if you can use the gate you probably want to use the gate... Why? because then you didn't have to power down your weapons to exit hyperspace... You won't be jumping in and out willy nilly with out a care... You will be having to make hard decisions about power management and whether you can afford a short weapons down time... or survive long enough for your jump engines to be charged back up enough for you to escape back to hyperspace. And any place worth destroying should have ground... orbital... and crewed defensive ships around it ready and waiting for attacks. That's what militaries do... they hang out guarding valuable places. If your installation couldn't hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive... you didn't have it guarded well enough. Or your forces were drawn off by a diversionary attack which you fell for.

One of the things I like about Hyperspace is you can gather a fleet there... and jump out into the system from multiple different places. But it requires fuel to maintain your position and fly through it so you can't stay there forever. At some point you have to jump back to normal space and be seen. One tactic in battle could be to jump into hyperspace and then back out so you're now attacking from a different direction. (only really possible for ships with power to spare... highest tech levels) I think interstellar travel should take a nominal amount of time. And be at least a little hazardous... hazards which you can avoid doing normal things... and hazards that get hard to avoid when trying to do something novel... But the novel thing should be possible if you get lucky/do it just right. With hyperspace someone could be going any of a number of places once they jump and it'll take a little time for them to get there. This gives the pursuers time to notify friends in other systems to be on the look out for them. It does mean that the farthest reaches of space are the provence of large groups who can get the crew and funds together to have jump engine equipped ships... and that the small guys have to explore the closer in places. But it doesn't mean that prospecting and exploration will only be for the power players or that people will be bound to the home system. Quite the contrary. It enables anyone with the cheapest space capable ship to traverse the known areas and reach the frontier where a new gate has only just been built in short order. There the detailed mapping of resources of all the planets and asteroid fields in that system who have only had cursory surveys done will be needed. There fuel depots will need to be made where the exploration ships come back to... to resupply. Where small time players could join an expedition as another survey ship when the exploration ship heads out. The B5 system is dependent on the organization functions of the game actually working... That people actually interact with each other to create the story of the universe... It isn't suited to the lone wanderer...

I apparently do... since you're asking about things already explained... I don't expect everyone to have seen Babylon 5 and I don't think I am necessarily the best at describing it... So explaining things over again in hopefully a more clear way when ever anyone asks a question I thought was already answered... is all I can do. That would have to be balanced. The Devs want to slow the expansion. So to prevent such things they could increase the sensor dampening effects of hyperspace. Meaning ships can't get too far from each other. But to a certain extent a chain of ships using each other as a reference point would be possible. They use this very method on the show to find and save a ship who's communication system was damaged... that caused them to no longer be able to detect the beacons. B5 sent in a flight of fighters and used each other as reference to dangle a line out there and hopefully get close enough for the lost ship for it to detect the fighter craft using their other working sensors. And it's a risky maneuver... if any link in the chain strays too far a whole section could be lost. In your system would travel be instant? Would traveling large distances require multiple jumps? Preventing "fly over" systems and creating trade posts? What's wrong with competition? Just how many people do you think will be exploring? There's a lot of infrastructure that need to be built and run by people... and not very much is automated. If an outpost has materials to sell it's because a player mined it somewhere and sold it to someone... who put it on their freighter and flew it out there to sell at a profit. The materials could have passed through several players hands to end up their for sale. Point is... most of the population of the game should not be out... alone... exploring. They should be... being involved in the player politics and profitable niches to be exploited in the populated systems. What ever system they make needs to keep old settlements important and useful. Needs to provide exploration opportunities in a way that lets civilization build up and not expand too fast... and yet have the dedicated explorers among us be occupied with that activity without much down time. Needs to provide interesting combat opportunities and tactics... choke points... regularly traveled routes... places to hide... ways to evade... ways to follow. Needs to allow the vast majority of people with cheap ships to travel around and see the universe and find their niche. I think the B5 system does all that. I think there certainly can be other systems ... I just think this is the best.

what point? The point where we advocate for our favorite sci-fi mechanics to be included in this sci-fi game? I think it's exactly on point.

There are no landmarks in Hyperspace. It's constantly shifting visually and has chaotic currents. Without the beacons from the stationary Jumpgates there is no way to tell where you are in relation to real space. Sensor range is severally limited ... even visually... you can't even see other ships once they get a little ways away. Like flying through a dense fog. Go too far and you can't detected the signals from the gates anymore and you're utterly lost. The Jumpgate Is a fixed point and thus its beacon provides a landmark. Carrying a beacon with you is absolutely pointless and makes zero sense. Since you're moving it has zero function. You can build a ship made mostly of fuel. But no amount will help you navigate a featureless expanse with currents that push you and turn you every which way without your knowledge. Lets say you try this jump... fly... jump... check position plan. You use your sensors and see where you are in real space and point yourself in the direction you want to go. You jump into hyperspace (for this example you're out of range of the gates) and immediately your ship is being pushed around and turned with out any visual indication of that to your eyes or sensors. You fly for a while then jump back out to real space. Not knowing where you are when you jumped means you are taking a risk that you're jumping back directly into something or within something... but most of space is empty so chances are you emerge somewhere between systems. You check your position... Oh look you've made no progress toward your goal. In fact you're some random place... not as far from your starting point as you thought you should be... like you were flying circles in hyperspace rather than a straight line. Because you were. Repeat until you're out of fuel... and starve to death in the vast emptiness. Now if you're in the range of the gates... you can match up their position with what you know of where the stars and planets are in real space and use that to navigate. You can have a computer to do the math to locate the position in hyperspace you need to be to emerge at an unexplored system because you have the fixed points to use as reference. Building jumpgates opens more systems to exploration. It allows much cheaper ships without jump engines to go through them and travel to other systems. Jump engines are expensive and require lots of energy to use... so are limited to ships big enough to house the power plants to utilize them. Which mean military's invest in few of them and have smaller craft dock to them... or fighters in a carrier type situation. Or one ship letting the fleet flying in formation in and out. About size of ships... the opposite should be true. As technology progresses the size of the power plant needed to generate the energy to run a jump engine should get smaller... allowing for smaller ships to have them. The first jump drive equipped ships should be stupidly.... ludicrously large. People with smaller ships could charter some groups large jump engine equipped ship to carry them... or fly in formation with them to a gateless system and either stay there to take them back... or return at a designated time to take them back.

An example from the show I'm basing all this off of. https://youtu.be/aPoqVgMSm1I I've not been able to figure out how to embed video... That's a deep space explorer. And here's a small single person size craft exploring a planet in a system with a recently discovered and reactivated ancient gate. https://youtu.be/03Gug8rMTSI This shows the range of possibility for exploration game play with this system.

Wormholes are point to point. You can only go one place... where the wormhole is connected. If you do a Stargate (as in the TV series) style where you generate the wormhole just before you use it and at that time choose it's exit point... a record is made of that travel to only one place... Which means there's no mystery... no evasion of pursuers really possible. Travel through them is traditionally instantaneous and an individual experience though there are ways to make them take time and be a group activity... which is better. But doing that still leaves us with the problem of exploration and how you travel to somewhere unknown... without a gate. In the hyperspace model I'm advocating... it's math... and an expensive jump engine equipped ship. To be able to explore systems within a certain distance of a system with a gate. In the various wormhole type stargate models that have been discussed and the Devs have described... it's a month or more of waiting for a probe to arrive traveling in real space so it can build a device there for you to travel there. 1 month to wait to explore 1 system? Or 10-15 minutes or less with the Babylon 5 style hyperspace system? In the B5 system every time a new gate was built there'd be a bunch of new systems to explore.

In that system most ships would need to use gates. Almost all ships would use the gates even if they could make their own jump points as gates are where they want to go any way and that way they don't have to spend the energy needed for it. They'd only use their jump point generating capability during combat operations or exploration operations. And just like in real life people finance to get large equipment. So a small group of people could not go outside the gate network unless they. 1. Get backed by a larger group. 2. Steal a ship. 3. Hitch a ride. 4. Take the long real space route. But... remember what type of game this is. It's sandbox... player driven... Not a themepark... not single player. The focus of the game is the interaction with the other players and the large organizations they make. It isn't designed for the individual or small group to be able to do everything and can't be. if you can do everything independent of everyone else then there is no drama. The barriers and overcoming them are what make games like this fun.

There will be small scale navigational hazards in real space as well... that's a given. But with a months long(irl) voyage in normal space to reach another star system... hazards would have to be huge or near constant... Space is supposed to be empty... Everywhere there's a beacon is populated... it's a map of the populated area. Hyperspace is disorienting... there's chaotic currents... and without the reference points from the beacons combined with starcharts plotting where stars and planets should be... taken from observatories in real space (just like we are starting to get in real life) you could jump out directly into the surface of a planet or star... But yes if you wanted too you could enter hyperspace... travel until you have lost the beacons... then wander aimlessly until you're nearly out of fuel and have to jump out... and hope you aren't jumping out into something... or jumping out between systems because then you're also screwed. There's no jump, move, drop out... repeat... No ship has the power... fuel... or sensors... needed to achieve such a thing.

It's a great show. Before its time. Very well thought out mechanics to how its universe works. I'd love if some it manages to influence this game.

In the B5 Hyperspace system. Gates would be spaced out... leaving numerous systems in between which would need to be explored by someone with an explorer class ship. To determine if they are worth building a gate at. The addition of each new gate would create a further bubble around it of systems an explorer class ship could reach while still being in range of the lock on signals from the gates so they can figure out where to exit... and so they don't exit into a planet... or a star... It's basically the best of both worlds. It slows expansion so populations remain concentrated but the actual act of exploration doesn't have long boring down times. It slows it because ships with jump drives are expensive so need a large organization to finance them. It provides a chunk of explorable space at a time contingent on new gates being constructed... or found and repaired and powered back up. And the actual act is a matter of flying your jump drive equipped craft with explorer sensors to the point in hyperspace the computer says a unexplored system should be and returning to real space there. And for everyone else... it means interstellar travel between places with gates doesn't require a big expensive ship... just any space worthy ship will do. And long trips involve several jumps and stop overs to resupply and or trade things along the way. And there's interesting military tactics that can be employed in conflicts.

No but you can make rounded organic shaped ships...

Define explore. There will be fast travel between systems... the stargates are that... And there's a debate on... on how we think they should work. We don't know how many systems will be connected with such gates at the start. Exploration could mean visiting where you haven't been before... or it could be visiting where no one has been before... Going where you've never been before... could have lots and lots of content... where ever gates have been made. Going where no one has gone before... well then you're going to have to be the one building the gates... and that's going to be a social thing. This game is all about the player driven social interactions and large group actions. Not about the individual wandering off alone in the vast universe to parts unknown. If you want that... There's a game called No Man's Sky coming out very soon... But it is not what Dual Universe is.

Making explicitly traversable Allows for: Hazards during travel. Travel to take a nominal amount of time. Which further allows players in some of the possible systems on the other end to be contacted and be on the look out for you if you did something they didn't like. Combat to occur... however risky and rare such a thing would be in the dangerous and sensor confusing hyperspace. Functions as a galactic map of the locally explored space. Limits the extent of the exploration mechanic... as you can only go so far from the region with active gates lest you lose their signals and get lost. While making exploration possible with out long boring months of travel.

While I'm not an advocate for such a system if that's the only method of travel... We're in an interconnected Sci-fi universe here... So several things could be done to liven up the journey. A few that come to mind... NPC characters you control back at "home" which could be doing things from construction to crafting to selling things on the market. The occasional ship board error that needs to be fixed. or interesting things to encounter... Interstellar capable ships might have to be large with several crew members needed to check in on them to keep them going. If so... you could make the various systems require constant monitoring... and interaction to maintain stable flight... then you all could take it in shifts. Interstellar travel can't be too easy or people will spread out to nothingness and none of the group infrastructure building would occur. But I advocate for a different system. Where real space, travel would still take IRL months to cross between stars... but there's other methods... namely hyperspace available. Which are must faster... so going the long way would just never happen. In my Babylon 5 type system exploration would be difficult but not shackled by long boring times of inactivity... It would just be expensive... requiring the support of a large organization to have a ship capable of finding the right spot in hyperspace and being able to return to real space on its own to arrive in a new system. Ancient jump gates could also be sprinkled about so if you had a really good sensor system you could pick up their weak lock on signal... and therefore go exploring with a much smaller ship.

Yep an extremely expensive to build stationary any to any gate that 90% of all ships have to use to get in and out of hyperspace and which ships will have to refuel near to continue their journey create trade hubs by virtue how rare they are. Also how hazardous hyperspace is... If you can just jump anywhere... space is huge and there wouldn't be any driving force to get people to gather any particular place. The ability to punch your own way into hyperspace is expensive and most ships can't do it. But is extremely important to a military... as you don't want your fleet stuck in hyperspace if someone shuts down or destroys the gate. So build a lot of small fighters and a carrier for them is a cost effective way to gain that ability. yep choke points because most ships have to use the gates. what's your question? If you're waiting in system or in deep space... you're visible. Also how will you communicate your deep space location to your other ships to meet up? a beacon? transmission? that's detectable and locate-able even if encrypted. please go read the other posts... I go into detail on how it all works... I even link videos... and I don't want to type all out again... or just copy and past everything here.