This is called a ballistic capture in case you were curious on the literature. A recent paper was published on it that was very interesting in its comparisons with traditional hohmann transfers. It still takes more time than a hohmann transfer but can result in less capture dV which is important for sending payloads to Mars.
I think you underestimate how large a realistically scaled solar system would be. Additionally, your proposed method of warp only in “interplanetary space” is stilli a bit flawed. Doing this would ruin any sort of trajectory you had in the first place. Unless your escape trajectory was already pointed straight at your destination so that you can just “turn on warp” and appear there a few minutes later, but in my opinion that sort of maneuver defeats the entire point of the setting in the first place.
Yes very intensive since travel times would range from hours to days. There might be a way to make it work but it requires a lot more thought. People are going to need flight computers at the very least. Programming one isn’t trivial, and it’s even less trivial to get a meaningful amount of people actually use/understand it!
I dunno, I think it would depend on whether ships disappear or are persistent when logged out. Warp would probably be pointless given the velocity I’d hope for the transfers. I’m not sure of how fast Martian transfers are, but if you can make one burn to cut that trip to less than a week, and run time at twice the speed, it would be three days to transfer. Combine that with JB’s recommendation of multiple ships per user, and you would have a combat oriented multiplayer KSP that you don’t have to log into religiously. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be a very, very niche server with long match times. Perhaps you could spice it up by giving every planet a day or more worth of play required before people move along.
Also, thank you for the terminology, my internet is…lacking at the moment.
With warp it’s very quick to get to an orbital velocity and I can see it being useful for when you go AFK. If you don’t go into an orbit you have to leave your engines on to avoid falling to the ground. If you put your ship in an orbit, which takes about a minute, you can power down your ship and reduce your signature.
Realistic fuel and orbits and transfers might be worth it for some sort of realistic space combat strategy or rpg game. You have your bases on planets or ships and then you have your large mothership that goes out and nukes things and smaller satellites that use lasers to fry the thrusters of other small vessels, small stealth ships that go in to soften up delicate or heavily protected targets or to transport spies, resupply vessels have to be managed so that you don’t run out of fuel and so that they can arrive at your location with the least expenditure of fuel and/or time… It would allow you to recreate some of the scenarios described in realistic sci-fi novels about war in space while time acceleration could take care of the waiting parts. And with the fidelity the I-Novae engine provides, you could even have a strategy/rpg/space sim hybrid where you can go down and pilot every one of those small or capital ships instead of leaving it up to the AI.
However having a completely realistic MMO space game where you pilot a single small vessel would probably not be very fun. It might be fun as a single player or co-op game, where you get to plan and then execute missions. But as an MMO, you’d either need the ships to be persistent (still exist when player is off-line) and have them send warnings via e-mail or similar when something happens or when whatever timer the user has set expires (meaning that if a player is busy and can’t respond to a sensor alert within X hours, they’re toast) or you’d need some system where time accelerates when all the players are not engaged in any activity and even then you have the problem of two people in combat slowing down things for everyone else.
On the other hand, realistic space combat would be really slow, filled with anxiety and anticipation, with very short bursts of excitement, so any pauses that end up happening between accelerated time might be really short. In that sense, the game might end up looking like a game of chess (because you have long yet limited times of thinking, planning, considering what everyone else is doing or might do in the future and waiting for a moment of action) and spreadsheets (because of the possible calculations required) in space with beautiful graphics.
Either way, it will probably require extensive modding. The simplest thing that can be done with orbits right now IMO is having the ship go in a low-power stealth mode, using passive sensors so it can scout for its team or wait for an opportunity to sneak-attack. Or maybe try to sneak past an enemy sensor array or automated defence system or patrol, if those end up being a thing.