Jump Drives? |
As I read a thread about area effect weapons, I was thinking about other well known sci-fi technologies which don't seem to be in Space Empires V.
Thus, jump drives. Such things are very common in very many sci-fi universes, yet they don't exist in Space Empires V. Is there any specific reason those things don't exist? These things could have hull size requirements, heavy cost and the like, and would work in numerous ways.
By two ways I mean the easier-to-program way and the harder-to-program way. The harder would make it so that you can use the jump drive to jump anywhere, literally, and the distance affecting how long it will take to arrive at the new location.
The easier to program way is the one that can target systems, so you'll use a jump drive and end up as if coming out of some systems wormhole.
I know this has been discussed before (aka the method of creating a new wormhole, going through, closing the one etc etc) but those methods have been akward and overly complicated. I'd much rather prefer a component(s) related to such.
So, any ideas? Or any info on why it's not in SEV or why it won't be in SEV?

Warp points incompatible
The main reason that no hyperlight drives have been added to SE:V (or any other SE) is because the warp points are the very foundation of the game. Being able to ignore this element of the game completely changes it.
That said, I would definitely like a hyperlight drive. The Space Fold button should be implemented, and I assume Aaron never actually deleted the code that supported it. In the chat log there was a mention of an expansion later on. Perhaps it is coming... perhaps...
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Give me atmopshperic manipulation cannons, or give me death!
Implimentation
I think an easy way to impliment it would be to have a component that opens up a wormhole to a given system. Then warps you through and then destroys the wormholl. All of the code for the 3 individual elements are there.
The Code elements that need to be adressed are to make it so that once you've agreed to make the wormhole than you can't stop the process until the wormhole is destroyed in the wake of your crossing.
Other items that should be included as a secondary effect is
1) Does this kill your movement points after the transfer.
2) What is the minimum distance you should be from the star
3) What is the minimum distance you should be from a planet
4) What kind of time frame are we needing before you can make the jump (full movment points/half/quarter)
Personally I can see a possible combination of the 2 Jumps like this can take you between nearby stars and then wormholes take you to far away stars. Jumps should therefore have a quite limited range say like 2-5 lighyears while the wormholes have a much much greater range.
One thing I would also like to see done is to change the way wormholes are placed. Currently they are placed with a minimum and maximum location setting. However the plannets use only the maximum setting which is the same as the maximum for the wormhole. Id like to see the 2 seperate so that you have a maximum for planets and a maximum for wormholes. In this way you can have a sizable gap between where a planet is and any wormhole. This simulates what happens in alot of sci-fi books were the wormholes or places were the enemy can jump into your system quite far out from the locations of the planet giving them time to meneuver defenses.
Other things I'd like to see wormholes do is to damage selective components. IE) kills shields, kill engines, kill sensors, and/or temporarily disable all of them. IE) no movement points. Sensor effectivity =0 for x turns. It would also be nice to be able to hide the wormholes. Some wormholes are more visible than others so that some you can see acrossed the solar system and others you can only see when you move a ship right on top of it and have an X class sensor.

Hmmmm it seems to me that
Hmmmm it seems to me that you are talking about a completely different game to Space Empires V. You might as well ask why can't I have a 1st person shooter em up as the ground combat.....
P.S. I don't want to sound completely dismissive or rude and certainly ain't wanting to start a lame flame war.

I don't see what the harm
I don't see what the harm would be in implementing it as an option if nothing else.
I think it's a good idea overall.
If I were to implement something like this, it would be an additional component that comes from a tech revealed by stellar manipulation at some point. The trade-off would be that it would be that it's massive, and normal thrusters/supply are still required once you enter the new system.
In implementation, it would work like opening a temporary warp hole. As well, the ships would be in limbo for a duration based on tech-level and distance. Achieving higher technology levels in jump drives would reduce the number of limbo turns and reduce the size of the component.
I think there are plans for
I think there are plans for the ability to mod in scripts later on. If that turns out be true then you could mod in a wormhole engine quite easily with a script and include all the above mentioned effects.
We'll just have to wait and see...we're still very early in the developement.
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

The problems with these
The problems with these ideas are that they would be great for human players, but terrible for the AI. The AI already has enough problems dealing with warp points, adding in the abbility to ignore them would just make it harder for the AI to play a reasonable game.
Depending on when these techs became available it would also massively skew the game, it would be idiotic to make strongholds on warp gates you would end up having to defend each and every planet that was valuable to you, getting the AI to do this effectively would be another nightmare. If this was to happen in early - mid game it would just break games, and it is possible in LATE games (or was in SE4, and I am sure it is in SE5 but have yet to had a game last long enough to find out) you simply get the tech device that lets you open new warp points, and hey presto... add in the device to collapse warp points and Bob's your uncle.
Actually this was a tactic I used to use in SE4, but only against human players as it was simply to easy to beat AI players using this.
The "no warp points" option
The "no warp points" option is amusing, because it seems to instantly kill your game, as the AIs can't figure out how to leave their cages. 

AI capable of No WP game...
That's not exactly true. The AI has conditions for a No-Warp points game to research the appropriate technology to gain warp point openers etc., although as with most things it's not too efficient as it has some planet utilization tech wanted beforehand.
If it's a full tech start, they should use the WP openers - although they may build other ship types first.
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The problem with that is
The problem with that is that the AI's inefficiencies quickly rack up and are compounded manyfold, and in a race for warp-points in a no-warp-point game, the first race that gains warp-point opening technology has a pretty hefty advantage which compounds rapidly, as once the galaxy is unlocked, they expand completely unchecked. Since the first race is invariably YOU, this exacerbates the problem greatly!
Believe me, I've tried this. Pre-breakout, I was generating maybe 200K RP/t, and I had a pretty crappy start system. The AI was putting out about 8-12K. Needless to say, I got there first, broke out into the rest of the galaxy. Within the next 10 years, my RPs were at 9.8M/t, I was the Master of the Universe, and the AIs were still stuck in their little holes putting out 12K RP/t.
Game over.
P.S.
Portalling into the AI's home system at last, I encountered a bevy of small ships armed with primitive weapons, none of which posed a credible threat to even an unarmed colony ship. I blew up their star.




Maybe create a new component
Maybe create a new component that does what the Stellar Manipulation components do? Give it a cost / level that scales with how far they can go (100 LY, 200 LY, etc). Maybe make it open up at level 1 of Stellar Manipulation and require at least 100kt of space. Then you could start a game with 'No Warp Points' option and use that as your means of traveling.
-Currently subjecting multiple galaxies to the doom of conquer or blackholes