Thanks. That’s a good data point to have in hand.
I’m more interested in the actual values of ships engaged in fights. Some sort of scatterplot/heatmap of shots that land, laid out against attacker speed and distance. Color each shot by the class of the attacker. Review. Post on http://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful. Profit.
Control/Usage
There is two axis that have to needed for warp:
Beginner/causal users
Advanced/manual controls
We should have both. It should be easy for new pilots to get going and zip around the universe. And as they get comfortable with the game and controls start using the advanced mode to do more exciting and aggressive tactics with wrap travel.
Interdiction
Along with warp should eventually bring in the concept of warp dampeners and interdiction. It doesn’t have to be complex gameplay but would offer some advanced tactics to players.
Multi-ship Warp
I’d also like to see the ability to group up with other players and jump/warp together. This mechanic would allow fleets to arrive together and make coordinated attacks more fun and EPIC. For instance, a bunch of fighters flying along side a carrier or cruiser.
Not that I disagree with the want for fleet warping, but why would you ever want for fighters outside the carrier during transit? I would hope for some mechanism that encourages docking during the jump, as a potential utility of capital ships.
Simplicity of operation. It takes time to drive a smaller ship inside a larger ship. If the smaller ships only need to get near the larger ship, then they can go with it when it jumps (if they want to).
Breaking the relationship between interior space and shared jumping. If any jump-capable ship can drag other ships with it, then it doesn’t matter how much internal space the larger ship has. Then it is simply a matter of the capacity of the ship’s jump drive that determines how large a fleet it can move. A carrier then becomes something that can move empty ships and other supplies, serve as a spawn point and so forth. A pure jump ship could be a destroyer with nothing but a massive jump drive. You could even designate destroyers to be the only jumpers, and everyone relies on them to get around.
no, you wouldn’t want this option. I’m assuming the smaller ships don’t have jump drives. then giving the smaller ships the option not to jump would mean getting left behind. if the fleet is jumping into battle, leaving someone behind would mean the capital ship would have to go back for them, taking one more ship out of combat. it would be best if everyone going with the fleet, be on the capital ship and be ready to go when they arrive.
the idea of being able to “take objects with you” when you jump isn’t such a good one. example: your out mining an asteroid and storing your cargo in cargo containers outside of your mining ship; this would be done so that other members of whatever fleet your apart of, can come in and take the cargo back. wile you stay and mine. giving the ability to jump with cargo out side of the ship, could mean someone else could jump in up get close then jump out with all your mined cargo.
There are many advantages of the area of effect jump drive. As JB said, simplicity of operation. It’s much simpler to group up around a carrier within radius x than to attempt entering its hangars one at a time. Factor in inexperienced pilots and griefers, and it becomes a disaster half the time.
In addition, it’s rather limiting to gameplay. In the area of effect model, the devs can assign an arbitrary maximum number of ships per carrier, whereas the internal volume of the carrier obviously has a hard cap. Also, capital ships would not be able to use a carrier’s jump drive if you had to fit inside. It would be much more optimal if capital ships could pool their jump drive strength into a faster fleet jump.
In Battlescape, players won’t mine or have any possessions to worry about except for their own ship, which can’t be stolen from them.
Edit: oops, didn’t read the second half of the post I mentioned…
This doesn’t help …
with this.
It is a problem, yes. Docking or not docking doesn’t really help with people arriving too late.
Either small ships could slow warp to the destination or self destruct isn’t really that big of a deal in an interceptor or bomber.
So if you or 10% of the fighting force misses the train it’s a little financial sacrifice for you and the team.
Not waiting at all would allow capships to be somewhere faster but if everyone has to slowboat or selfdestruct that could mean a big financiall problem later in the battle.
We are talking about miniscule ranges here. Maybe 10km max. If an enemy capital can sneak up on your teams capitals like that, they may as well destroy them.
Also, I highly doubt that the move you described would be allowed by the game. I also doubt that there will be cargo containers at all.
I want to emphasize that mining is not planned in I:BS. The devs have ruled out economic activities for players beyond raiding NPC haulers to cripple the other side’s economy.
well, their you have it, problem solved
this leaves me to wonder what the point is… however, this is not the place for this topic.