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Am I alone in thinking that Stargate Probes are a bad idea?


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Also to be clear. When I'm talking about exploration taking time, the main sink will be the jump drive(s) recharging. During which you'll be figuring out how far to jump next, and in what direction.

 

When you've traveled to a place you'll be able to figure out (or place) some markers that you know to jump from there X distance in X direction. If they have a co-ords system it will be even easier. But you'll still have to plug it in yourself.

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Personally I think that all FTL should be done via instantaneous teleportation. But have the methods defined by logistics and security.

 

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Method 1) Jump Envelope.

The warp generator creates a bubble a certain distance around itself and teleports everything inside to a location a preset distance away along a straight line. You plug in the distance for each jump and it takes you there. The jump requires an enormous amount of power which registers as a spike on any sensor in the star system. The generator then has to recharge before it can jump again. It does not work in gravity wells.

The size of the Jump envelope is dictated by the number and placement of warp generators on the ship. One is enough for a small corvette sized ship (Serenity, Millennium falcon). Anything outside the field is left behind.

 

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Method 2) Jump envelope + beacon

You can set up a beacon that anybody can align and jump to with a standard jump envelope. The beacon requires warp generators to build and consumes them in its operation. While burning the beacon is visible on sensors within a few light years.

 

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Border Countermeasure: using a warp generator plus some other components you can create a teleport area denial node (TAD). This creates a minor distortion in local space which prevents the use of jump envelopes within a several thousand kilometer bubble (exact distance subject to balancing). TADs require constant power to operate and are detectable within the same system (although they don't light up nearly as much as jump signatures)

 

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Method 3) Jump Gates

Using several warp generators mounted to a physical gate and an ungodly supply of energy you create a stable portal between two locations. You need a gate at each end. An active gate is a huge continuous sensor spike in the system it is operating in.

 

teraport area denial system http://www.schlockmercenary.com/)

Method one is the Warp Bubble the devs suggest they will add later for balance's sake. The method 2's beacon in the nature of a probe and a stargate/jumpgate of method 3 is how they envision for jumpgates to function. IF you can have different ranges, for different power levels on the stargate and If they are scriptable as well, you can even create a "keycode" authorisation using LUA, where the gate will read a fleet's captain's console's keypress entries in a certain function and THEN allow for the ship to transit itself and anyone else on its flotilla to a system further away than the adjacent ones. For example, an Empire might set super-gates in a choke point in their borders, given their resources, and they can keep their capital fleet on their capital world, therefore allowing for instant interventions from center to border within minutes. That would COST a lot to do, but it's an incentive for people to work together. and be loyal and reliant to an Empire with strengths it can project in a mobile force of ships.

 

FYI, the keypress code can be assigned for each battleship captain, so if someone screws you over, you know who it was.

 

It's not about exploration, it's about settling an Empire, and Empires need safety nets. Like borders.

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I'd say make FTL similar to Star Trek or Star Wars. You aren't invincible and you aren't teleporting. It would be a lot slower than stargates (of course) but is a necessary first step in creating a stargate network. How else would you get stargates in other systems?

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I'd say make FTL similar to Star Trek or Star Wars. You aren't invincible and you aren't teleporting. It would be a lot slower than stargates (of course) but is a necessary first step in creating a stargate network. How else would you get stargates in other systems?

The point is that Star Trek had little to no basis on military ideologies in its inception. Roddenberry envisioned the future as a peaceful coexistence, with the Klingon being the sight of oppressors and alelgedly, the Soviets while the Romulans were the equivalent of the Chinese with the Vulcans being the japanese. It's complicated, I know. Warp in Star Trek illustrated the idea of a peaceful coexistence between the different ideologies, to boldly go where noone has gone before. Too bad, like on a planet, space has borders as well.

 

 

Why Free Warp doesn't work? Many reasons. One of them is that actual Warp warps time as well. You can punch the drive to go forth, but you ain't holding the steering wheel in any shape or form. In my opinion, the Probe-Based FTL bypasses the problem by feeding you information on where and how to jump to not overshoto a planet. If you were to land 6 Light days behind away from a system, that would take you a lot of time to get back to your intended destination. 

 

 

Plus, having free warp negates any reason fr large empires to work. Why bother rolling with the bigger fish if pirates can ruin your day just because Little Timmy has a warp-drive on his suicide ship?

 

 

The devs spoken for a super-capital ship being able to outfit itself with a warp-bubble generator, which DOES make sense, since powerfl factions will be able to afford SUCH A POWERFUL WEAPON.

 

 

You should start thinking by the perspective of an MMO. IF you add Warp to anything, you make the game chaotic and daunting for new players who want to learn in their own pace in the safety of an empire's mainspace.

 

 

Plus, no warp for everyone leaves the possibility for a No Man's Stars situation, where you have a battlezone between faction borders that people go in and wreck havoc on each other, which would make cross-borders smuggler possible. Why have smuggelrs or traders or pirates, if you can warp from your trading post to the trading post you want to go sell things?

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I'd say you worry too much CptT.

 

I wonder if you bothered to comprehend what I was saying or just went off on a rant after you saw the words "Star Trek." I'm advocating for an FTL drive that works exactly like Sublight movement. You only get to go faster, that's all. No surprise teleporting. No jumping of any kind. Movement through space at FTL speed. Everything else is the same.

 

 

The point is that Star Trek had little to no basis on military ideologies in its inception. Roddenberry envisioned the future as a peaceful coexistence, with the Klingon being the sight of oppressors and alelgedly, the Soviets while the Romulans were the equivalent of the Chinese with the Vulcans being the japanese. It's complicated, I know. Warp in Star Trek illustrated the idea of a peaceful coexistence between the different ideologies, to boldly go where noone has gone before. Too bad, like on a planet, space has borders as well.

True, but this has no bearing on this discussion of DU's FTL. Go watch DS9.

 

Why Free Warp doesn't work? Many reasons. One of them is that actual Warp warps time as well. You can punch the drive to go forth, but you ain't holding the steering wheel in any shape or form. In my opinion, the Probe-Based FTL bypasses the problem by feeding you information on where and how to jump to not overshoto a planet. If you were to land 6 Light days behind away from a system, that would take you a lot of time to get back to your intended destination.

What is the problem with no steering? Seems like balance for the FTL ability.

 

 

Plus, having free warp negates any reason fr large empires to work. Why bother rolling with the bigger fish if pirates can ruin your day just because Little Timmy has a warp-drive on his suicide ship?

How? Why? And why wouldn't this happen anyway?

 

 

The devs spoken for a super-capital ship being able to outfit itself with a warp-bubble generator, which DOES make sense, since powerfl factions will be able to afford SUCH A POWERFUL WEAPON.

I think Nyz said somewhere that FTL was going to be a major ship's system so it may turn out only larger ships can have an FTL drive.

 

 

You should start thinking by the perspective of an MMO. IF you add Warp to anything, you make the game chaotic and daunting for new players who want to learn in their own pace in the safety of an empire's mainspace.

Chaotic and daunting? Says who? You? It simply increases the scope of the playable universe, that's all.

 

 

Plus, no warp for everyone leaves the possibility for a No Man's Stars situation, where you have a battlezone between faction borders that people go in and wreck havoc on each other, which would make cross-borders smuggler possible. Why have smuggelrs or traders or pirates, if you can warp from your trading post to the trading post you want to go sell things?

Again, why wouldn't this normally happen?

 

I would also mention that without the ability to travel freely - in terms of software limits, not emergent gameplay - defeats the purpose of a sandbox game. Without the ability to travel freely, NQ might have to uncheck that box for DU.

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I'd say you worry too much CptT.

 

I wonder if you bothered to comprehend what I was saying or just went off on a rant after you saw the words "Star Trek." I'm advocating for an FTL drive that works exactly like Sublight movement. You only get to go faster, that's all. No surprise teleporting. No jumping of any kind. Movement through space at FTL speed. Everything else is the same.

 

True, but this has no bearing on this discussion of DU's FTL. Go watch DS9.

 

What is the problem with no steering? Seems like balance for the FTL ability.

 

How? Why? And why wouldn't this happen anyway?

 

I think Nyz said somewhere that FTL was going to be a major ship's system so it may turn out only larger ships can have an FTL drive.

 

Chaotic and daunting? Says who? You? It simply increases the scope of the playable universe, that's all.

 

Again, why wouldn't this normally happen?

 

I would also mention that without the ability to travel freely - in terms of software limits, not emergent gameplay - defeats the purpose of a sandbox game. Without the ability to travel freely, NQ might have to uncheck that box for DU.

 

Why wouldn't Empires work ? Because of the fact borders mean nothing. Anyone could troll you by jumping at your capital, dropping a few million tons worth of bombs and book it before you could even react. Yeah, you are advocating for the teen with angst that wants to ruin your game without putting much effort into it. 

 

 

The devs spoken of a very large ship that could house a warp bubble, not "any" large ship. Also, that warp bubble would and should be something only large empires can build, as a sign of their might, not Johny Nobody who dumped 250$ in PLEX just so that he can "troll" you. You wouldn't see such ships on the market. Because WARP is a VERY, VERY powerful tool.

 

 

Also, exploration. That should be a slow process, that actually rewards a team of players' hard work with a planet they can tag and then sell the probe's coordinates to the highest bidder. Which also, leads to a sandbox MMORPG's like Dual's greatest feature, EMERGENT gameplay. Being an explorer should be a commitment, not a saturday joyride in warp. 

 

 

Why would ANY player bother in exploring after a month in the game if 1000 people had warp drives and had unlocked 1500 systems? Also, the devs wouldn't be able to keep up with how much strain that would be on the server, hence their words on Warp not being a free-roam thing. Again, just because they made a server tech that can support many players in a single cluster, it doesn't mean the server is somehow magical in nature and built like a brickhouse. They intend for the first months at least to be slow on the server's strain so they can back-up and update when it's needed. If you were to go and zoom around the stars, that would make the server crack in half within a month of the game's release.

 

 

You confuse a SINGLE-PLAYER sandbox like Skyrim, with an MMO Sandbox like Dual. If you were to warp around the game and go and gank whoever you wanted, that would defuse the point of a CONTINUOUS single-shard server. This is not EVE where the systms are a server of their own. The game is CONTINUOUS. Accelerated Warp or Teleporting one, is not the arguement here. It's ease of passage. And ease of passage makes any fortification pointless.

 

 

And there's a great difference between a pirate group ganking you in a grey zone, where it's fair game and another to gank you in your own territory where you should be safe. The first is an aspect of emergent gameplay, the latter is making empires and their strengths pointless.

 

 

But hey, if it's challenging to be a griefer, argue about "sandbox freedom" in an MMO, right? 

 

 

Ask all you want of "Freedom of Ganking" mechanics, they won't be added. Better learn to plan out on the easiest way to gank a trading route, cause chances are you won't have much success in piracy at all. You know, like an actual pirate would plan. But hey, what do I know about "High Risks, High Rewards", it's all about "Give me Warp so I can grief people", right?

 

 

I mean, who cares about the builders who don't want to PvP? They are not people, they don't want a safe haven to be creative so they can provide for an empire/faction , EVERY teen with anger issues should be able to Warp and drop every single rock they can find on their constructs, right? Those peaceful guys should learn the hard truth, that the game is a grief-fest, right? That they should not even bother playing, they should leave, the game is only for griefers that can warp at any point and wreck their stuff. That should teach those guys who want to play a Sandbox MMO the peaceful way. Pffft, I know right, who cares about THOSEl guys who don't want warp because they don't want their stuff to be wrecked every 2 days, right? Those guys don't belong in YOUR sandbox MMO , Dual Skyrim : Dovahkin in Space, right?

 

The thing is, they won't give you warp on your small time ship. It would be a thing that requires a lot of materials and a lot of power to activate. It would be a thing super-capital ships would outfit themselves with and it would need a lot of maintenance because of its power, that's right out of the Ask Us Anything quote by the way, go check it out again.

 

 

Keep advocating on "Freedom of Ganking". Unlike others, I advocate for challenging gameplay, but hey, who needs challenge and pre-planning logistics on a PvP endeavor. 

 

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I think warp is possible as FTL methode, its just a question of balancing. On the one hand it needs to be fast enough so that it isn't useful/very difficult to use in systems (like if you don't drop out of warp just in the right moment, you are 100000km away from your targeted destination.) and on the other hand it needs to be slow enough so that the trip to the other system doesn't degenerate to a day trip. (Example if you need 2 1/2 months to the neighbouring system with sublight at 90% SoL, you should need with warp 1 to 2 weeks, approximatly 4 to 8 times the SoL.)

That should be possible even with not nearly realistic distances.

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I don't see why you think a gate network will give you the borders you seek. It won't be like EVE with 1-3 gates per system leading to the immediately adjacent systems.

 

The gates will be built by players. That means they'll go wherever an organisation wants to put one, not set down by the will of the devs. I fully expect multiple gates leading between systems. Some public ones, but a crap ton of private ones built as back doors and secret paths. And not just to adjacent systems but also to far flung areas. The newest colony in 5 years time is just as likely to be connected to the first system via multiple gates as the one next door. 

The only choke points that exist will be frontier systems that only have one or two gates. But that will change quickly because as soon as there is one public gate every other organisation will send their own gate building ships through and there will be portals to twenty other systems in a matter of hours.

 

There is going to be too many gates to watch, let alone guard. And that's without talking about the possibility of gates carried by large ships.

 

The only way to realistically fortify your space is to have central military bases with gates going to every system you want to protect, and strong point defences on your holdings that are able to hold off an enemy fleet until you can get there. Or station forces at every holding.

 

It works out basically the same as a universe with Teleportation or FTL speed. Except we spend a crap ton of resources and time building redundant gates.


The only way you can reduce ganking is through good point defences and sensor networks. Pirates and griefers are going to slip through the net no matter what system of interstellar transport you use. Especially since you don't need to travel between star systems to hide. You can just build a mobile ship base and keep moving throughout the system to avoid detection.
The best defence is to have a ton of automatic turrets waiting for them. Or hide yourself.

If they implemented forcefields that would also go a ways to reducing potential troll damage. That way they couldn't just hit and run with something heavy, they'd have to reduce the shields first. Probably while taking fire from the automatic defences.

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To use the words of someone who had the same discussion with me years ago:

"The battle of Thermopylae wouldnt even be a footnote in the history books if the persians could have taken a million other ways"

Freeform travel opens up so many ways of getting somewhere that strategic choke points cease to exist.

You couldnt stop a force in its tracks by holding a strategic "bridge" or "pass".

Because they dont have to use them in the first place.

In short: freeform travel removes all semblance of strategic blockades from the game and reduces controlled territories to the points which are directly in range of defense weaponry.

 

 

Twerkmotor: how would freely available FTL remove the point of the continous world?

Continous FTL very much reinforces that its a single world and not a series of discrete rooms :P

 

And EVE is single shard as well, theres only one game world for all the players (ignoring the test universe).

The world of DU wont run on a single piece of server hardware as well, it just subdivides differently.

Not along hard area/volume borders but by population density.

There'll still be servers along which the players will be distributed, though :P

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/09/26/a-single-shard-continuous-universe-one-world-no-boundaries/

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I don't see why you think a gate network will give you the borders you seek. It won't be like EVE with 1-3 gates per system leading to the immediately adjacent systems.

 

The gates will be built by players. That means they'll go wherever an organisation wants to put one, not set down by the will of the devs. I fully expect multiple gates leading between systems. Some public ones, but a crap ton of private ones built as back doors and secret paths. And not just to adjacent systems but also to far flung areas. The newest colony in 5 years time is just as likely to be connected to the first system via multiple gates as the one next door.

The only choke points that exist will be frontier systems that only have one or two gates. But that will change quickly because as soon as there is one public gate every other organisation will send their own gate building ships through and there will be portals to twenty other systems in a matter of hours.

 

There is going to be too many gates to watch, let alone guard. And that's without talking about the possibility of gates carried by large ships.

 

The only way to realistically fortify your space is to have central military bases with gates going to every system you want to protect, and strong point defences on your holdings that are able to hold off an enemy fleet until you can get there. Or station forces at every holding.

 

It works out basically the same as a universe with Teleportation or FTL speed. Except we spend a crap ton of resources and time building redundant gates.

 

 

The only way you can reduce ganking is through good point defences and sensor networks. Pirates and griefers are going to slip through the net no matter what system of interstellar transport you use. Especially since you don't need to travel between star systems to hide. You can just build a mobile ship base and keep moving throughout the system to avoid detection.

The best defence is to have a ton of automatic turrets waiting for them. Or hide yourself.

 

If they implemented forcefields that would also go a ways to reducing potential troll damage. That way they couldn't just hit and run with something heavy, they'd have to reduce the shields first. Probably while taking fire from the automatic defences.

partially true.

But the point is that gates enable choke points at all, and not just completely remove the possibility of them being there in the first place.

you /can/ fortify subsections of settled space and not just individual poins.

It'll be hard and needs monitoring of your space to prevent backdoors being installed/undefended.

But its at least possible, and encourages thinking and player interaction on both sides of a war.

Instead of the attackers just beelining to their target.

Both the defender and attacker would have to search for ways into the defended area and control them for their own goals, coercing/bribing/pressing the owners of other gates into service for themself

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Honestly I'm over gatewars after EVE. It's the main reason I'm arguing for anything else.

 

That and I think that the amount of back doors in such a system will make trying to hold a front line redundant. 

Which is where the whole need for players to be paid salaries in-game to go on patrol routes and check for any enemy probes sneaking in your system for a surprise attack. This is what emergent gameplay is all about. And let's be honest, there will be Grey Zones in the game, areas that are contested where people will want to set up outposts, while the main portion of the Empire/Faction provides minerals for that expedition. That's also emergent and interesting. 

 

 

Chancees are, most of us will be grunts to such wars, not the generals pulling the strings. And I'm totally fine with that, as long as the gameplay is engaging. Which it will be. 

 

But having warps in every other ship creates a level of unpredictability that is so colossal, it's silly.

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Honestly I'm over gatewars after EVE. It's the main reason I'm arguing for anything else.

 

That and I think that the amount of back doors in such a system will make trying to hold a front line redundant.

 

And "the amount of back doors" you are using as an argument is inferred from what exactly?

 

From what i gathered about the game its that gates will be frickin huge and expensive, nothing any small time privateer could casually plonk down if hes in the mood.

And if they arent expensive enough and the game becomes too unfun clusterfark, its a game and numbers in games can easily be changed.

All in all i dont believe that the amount of gates will be that large.

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And "the amount of back doors" you are using as an argument is inferred from what exactly?

 

From what i gathered about the game its that gates will be frickin huge and expensive, nothing any small time privateer could casually plonk down if hes in the mood.

And if they arent expensive enough and the game becomes too unfun clusterfark, its a game and numbers in games can easily be changed.

All in all i dont believe that the amount of gates will be that large.

"I think he's inferring it from the point of view that scripts can be used to gain access to others objects (much like unauthorised access). This can be prevented of course if each object's script is given a private or protected access modifier or something of the like. While the number of gates at the beginning may be minute, in time to come, they will be a lot more: in tens or hundreds.

 

Pax Vobiscum."

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Why wouldn't Empires work ? Because of the fact borders mean nothing. Anyone could troll you by jumping at your capital, dropping a few million tons worth of bombs and book it before you could even react. Yeah, you are advocating for the teen with angst that wants to ruin your game without putting much effort into it. 

 

Which can be done with or without FTL.

 

 

 

 

Why would ANY player bother in exploring after a month in the game if 1000 people had warp drives and had unlocked 1500 systems? Also, the devs wouldn't be able to keep up with how much strain that would be on the server, hence their words on Warp not being a free-roam thing. Again, just because they made a server tech that can support many players in a single cluster, it doesn't mean the server is somehow magical in nature and built like a brickhouse. They intend for the first months at least to be slow on the server's strain so they can back-up and update when it's needed. If you were to go and zoom around the stars, that would make the server crack in half within a month of the game's release.

 

Certainly FTL should be limited to slower distances for the scope of DU. The devs have stated:

 

We have in mind to introduce FTL drives at some point. We want to gamify this notion, to make the FTL drive a central element of a large ship infrastructure. You can imagine being heavily damaged during a battle and unable to flee because the FTL drive is detroyed or scrambled, which would start a race to try to repair it and escape. Some people in the ship crew will most likely be dedicated to maintenance of the FTL drive, no matter what. To clarify: the goal of FTL drive is to allow your ship to do interplanetary travel.

So since it would be intended to be used on an interplanetary level, it could be used to cross interstellar distances over a long period of time. So it could be IRL days or weeks for FTL ships to make it from one system to another. To have the community at large explore up to 1000 or more systems should take years of runtime. Besides, that wouldn't cause much strain on the servers since they only record the changes made to procedurally generated planets.

 

Secondly, they don't state that they intend to make FTL only available for super large ships, only that it's a "central element of a large ship."

 

 

 

 

You confuse a SINGLE-PLAYER sandbox like Skyrim, with an MMO Sandbox like Dual. If you were to warp around the game and go and gank whoever you wanted, that would defuse the point of a CONTINUOUS single-shard server. This is not EVE where the systms are a server of their own. The game is CONTINUOUS. Accelerated Warp or Teleporting one, is not the arguement here. It's ease of passage. And ease of passage makes any fortification pointless.

As Cornflakes said, FTL doesn't effect the continuous single shard server element at all.

 

 

 

You also seem overly obsessed about borders. Why do there need to be borders? An organization can protect its assets without borders. The scale of space is incredible, so talking about borders is insane. Extremely advanced technology should be the only thing to establish a bonafide border. If you rely only on a border to protect you, you're gonna have a bad time.

 

 

As for all your "Freedom of Ganking," griefers will do what they do, no matter the form of FTL. If you want to be absolutely safe, then there is a 20km safe zone around the arkship just for you, possibly elsewhere. After all, space is a dangerous place; without risk there is no reward.

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Which can be done with or without FTL.

 

 

 

 

Certainly FTL should be limited to slower distances for the scope of DU. The devs have stated:

So since it would be intended to be used on an interplanetary level, it could be used to cross interstellar distances over a long period of time. So it could be IRL days or weeks for FTL ships to make it from one system to another. To have the community at large explore up to 1000 or more systems should take years of runtime. Besides, that wouldn't cause much strain on the servers since they only record the changes made to procedurally generated planets.

 

Secondly, they don't state that they intend to make FTL only available for super large ships, only that it's a "central element of a large ship."

 

 

 

As Cornflakes said, FTL doesn't effect the continuous single shard server element at all.

 

 

 

You also seem overly obsessed about borders. Why do there need to be borders? An organization can protect its assets without borders. The scale of space is incredible, so talking about borders is insane. Extremely advanced technology should be the only thing to establish a bonafide border. If you rely only on a border to protect you, you're gonna have a bad time.

 

 

As for all your "Freedom of Ganking," griefers will do what they do, no matter the form of FTL. If you want to be absolutely safe, then there is a 20km safe zone around the arkship just for you, possibly elsewhere. After all, space is a dangerous place; without risk there is no reward.

 

 

Well, deal with it. The devs plan on a jump-to-a-probe system of FTL. So, yeah, if a guy manages to sneak in a probe in your capital, then he and his buddies could jump there with precision, similar to BattleStar Galactica way of FTL jumps, only the probe sends you the coordinates, you don't plant them out.

 

 

And the enormous ships that would give you the chance to warp-roam, would be meant for immediate reinforcements and would be resource hogs to build and maintain.

 

 

And you seem to think that Grey Zones apply everywhere within a country. Grey Zones and open space are were pirates roam, not in a stsr system, deep inside an empire.

 

 

And you seem to think the game will have 500000000 billion players, while the server will be supporting about 1000000 at max capacity. Who is gonna defend borders? What kind of tech will keep protecting a system 360 degrees around its perimeter?

 

 

Just say you are a griefer mate, honesty is liberating. Just say you want to gank people freely, without having to take the risk of lurking through a territory's borders, where you would be immediately wrecked. Nobody is judging you for being a griefer, but stop pleading for Free-Roam. The devs have stated time and time again they go for a probe/FTL combo. Just deal with it, the same way I dealt with the game not having First Person Shooter combat, but an Action Lock-On.

 

What I'm saying is : You want to be a pirate or griefer, you should have to put effort in positioning yourself, not simply Free-Warping.

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@CaptainTwerkmotor: stop accusing Velenka (or anyone else) of being a griefer just because his opinion differs from yours.

 

@Velenka: 

the thing with borders, or rather with limited-throughput choke points, is that they make strategic combat less of a "i have more cannons than you" slugfest but make them more dynamic.

 

with free FTL the attacker can just drop his attack force on a chosen target without much thought beyond "do they have more guns there than i can bring", with reinforcements/supplies making a beeline to the fleet through interstellar space.

 

whereas with bound FTL or gates the whole ordeal becomes a lot more involved and needs actual strategy.

"can i get there" "how do i get there" "can i keep the route safe for my supplies" "can i cut off their supplies" "can they cut off my retreat" 

and so on and so forth.

 

with free FTL its straight up firepower vs firepower at any interesting installation.

 

with bound FTL you can have large power multiplication effects if either side is smart.

a well placed fortress can defend many installations at once by holding a gate connection to the weaker defended backyard, even against technically superior forces.

a smart attacker can get around strong defenses when he finds/builds a gate connection around the fortifications.

 

 

its as simple as that limitations in strategic movement would make more interesting gameplay.

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I really like this idea.

 

Sort of like Eve and wormholes ... instead of making sure I have plenty of probes in my hold to find openings in DU just make sure you have extra probes if a gate is blown up while on the wrong side.

 

The possibility of being able to connect/disconnect interstellar travel lanes brings a huge strategic component to the game. Plus you build it, you own it :D

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I really like this idea.

 

Sort of like Eve and wormholes ... instead of making sure I have plenty of probes in my hold in DU just make sure you have extra probes if a gate is blown up while on the wrong side.

 

The possibility of being able to connect/disconnect interstellar travel lanes brings a huge strategic component to the game. Plus you build it, you own it :D

 

You own it, you can tax it  B)

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Well I'm gonna make a star gate and just play Papers, Please!

"While you play papers, the defense of the stargate is left to who?

No offence, but some of us here would rather wait to have someone build a stargate and then "coerce" you into giving it up, piece by piece.

"

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I personally like the player built jump gate idea very much.  As has been said, they will be tremendously expensive and certainly not a thing a small group would build, unless they were very successful at something else and paid someone to do it.  Remember, there will be vast amounts of resources in the game and it will all need to go somewhere or the inflation will devalue and destroy the game.  Having to constantly send expensive pieces of hardware off into the void for weeks to months at a time to expand will be a great driver for the economy and once these structures are built I'm sure they will make for great target practice by the rivals of the builders.  So expect it to take a few tries to get anything going, simply because those who build the first jump gate will look strong and the strong are challenged.  This will be an event akin to the first Titan in EVE, the pinnacle of a vast undertaking and the biggest target in the system.

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I personally like the player built jump gate idea very much.  As has been said, they will be tremendously expensive and certainly not a thing a small group would build, unless they were very successful at something else and paid someone to do it.  Remember, there will be vast amounts of resources in the game and it will all need to go somewhere or the inflation will devalue and destroy the game.  Having to constantly send expensive pieces of hardware off into the void for weeks to months at a time to expand will be a great driver for the economy and once these structures are built I'm sure they will make for great target practice by the rivals of the builders.  So expect it to take a few tries to get anything going, simply because those who build the first jump gate will look strong and the strong are challenged.  This will be an event akin to the first Titan in EVE, the pinnacle of a vast undertaking and the biggest target in the system.

"Then secure your stargate by making open to public use. Just the first one, of course. You don't have to give everything to the public. Once you allow other organisations to use it, the person that destroys your stargate becomes the community's enemy too. Except, of course you are the kind that starts trouble, in that case, you had the trouble coming."

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