Please Reintroduce Jump Drives

[dtpsprt]

I feel like people are not carefully reading the OP, and instead assuming that the idea of jump drives I proposed would be like X3. They would not, in several critical ways. The idea presented here would prevent them from ruining strategic gameply by simply being able to jump anywhere and everywhere. Instead they can only jump to friendly jump modules on stations, which greatly limits their potential to bypass enemy defenses.

I am not happy with the current state of mods to add back in jump drives, because the current mods do not grant AI the ability to use jump drives as the player would.

I totally agree even though, to me, it seems that people (at least in this forum) are hell bent against jump drives but if you give them the same function naming it, let's say, "carrot salad" most of them (if not all) Would say: "Well done", "nicely thought" etc etc because wit the existing mechanics once you are rich enough (and that comes very easy imho) all problems are solved, since strategy is diminished to how many ships you can have.

The current state of the mods for jumpdrive needs improvement for certain. That said they do solve problems (like being stuck inside the walls of a dock till kingdom come).

[ubuntufreakdragon]

L/XL ships have 2 Issues
1. They aren't mobile enough (Jumpdrive is an obvious solution, and I don't see another)
2. They don't do enough for their size (e.g. Cargo capacity of L Tradeships has to go up much, some destroyers are pretty undergunned)

about JD Implementation:
Target-Station-jump-module, just use the Admin centre.
You don't want to have all L/XL ships spam Equipmentdocks for refuelling, there needs to be a cheaper smaller module.

[Falcrack]

You don't want to have all L/XL ships spam Equipmentdocks for refuelling, there needs to be a cheaper smaller module.

You could have a cheap module called "refueling station", which would use the model of the L/XL maintenance bay, but only has refueling capability. You could have several more of these than equipment docks located in far more location. They could purchase antimatter cells, and convert them to jump fuel, and not have to tie up equipment docks or shipyards in the process.

[Stu Austin]

Hello all. I personally do miss jumpdrives but I don't want to see them again. With jumpdrives, the Xenon will have them also and I don't want to see that. I just spent a lot of time blockading the Xenon where the K's and I's are nowhere in the race sectors now. My Defence Platforms can take them out within a few seconds. After wiping all Xenon from the sectors (almost 30 at the time), turning the sectors neutral and having the races claim the sectors as their own, its finally nice to be able to fly around, do missions, trading without having to worry about K's and I's terrorizing the races. It really does not take long to fly from one end of the map to the other.
stu

[Falcrack]

Hello all. I personally do miss jumpdrives but I don't want to see them again. With jumpdrives, the Xenon will have them also and I don't want to see that. I just spent a lot of time blockading the Xenon where the K's and I's are nowhere in the race sectors now. My Defence Platforms can take them out within a few seconds. After wiping all Xenon from the sectors (almost 30 at the time), turning the sectors neutral and having the races claim the sectors as their own, its finally nice to be able to fly around, do missions, trading without having to worry about K's and I's terrorizing the races. It really does not take long to fly from one end of the map to the other.
stu

With the idea I am proposing, Xenon will only be able to jump to their own stations. Does that sound like it would be that much more scary than what we have now? If Xenon manage to get up a defense station in a sector, they could more easily jump to that defense station, but destroy the defense station, and they would still have to enter your system via flying through gates. They would not, for example, be able to jump around wherever they want and circumvent all the gate defenses you set up.

[jlehtone]

Are you forgetting the caveat I indicated in the OP? That Jump drives cannot lock on to gates, and can only lock on the jump modules, which are constructed onto stations?

Would it be enough to build a station that has only the jump module? How much tonnage would one need to sneak in to build that much? The Xenon S are quite good at slipping through and they don't even need a Builder.

[Falcrack]

Are you forgetting the caveat I indicated in the OP? That Jump drives cannot lock on to gates, and can only lock on the jump modules, which are constructed onto stations?

Would it be enough to build a station that has only the jump module? How much tonnage would one need to sneak in to build that much? The Xenon S are quite good at slipping through and they don't even need a Builder.

I mean you could balance it however you want, but I would envision building a jump beacon module to be a significant investment. The module itself could also be made to be quite fragile and easily destructible.

[pref]

I would have station modules that can send 1 or few ships to sectors within range and with an owned defence station, to a spot at least 100km away from anything stationary (stations, highways, gates).
Could also use beacons or random spots.
With def stations it is limited to sectors where the user has infrastructure and some kind of economic reach. Plus for npc factions this would mean only targeting sectors where faction logic is active.

The send module should be high effort to construct, and have a significant cooldown (30-60mins). Should not need high rep, just large amount of materials and some extra build time.

L/XL Ships could have reduced engine effectiveness after jump and shields removed - they should not be usable within few minutes after deployment.

Send module should also be able to have any single player S/M ship jump to any other sector with a somewhat lower cooldown. For NPCs this should rather be a 3-5 ship S/M squad (rapid react).

Max amount of modules per faction should be one that can cover the map with the module's range.

Factions should have it from start and use it, forcing them to rely on player is a huge disadvantage on top of the existing ones (limited production, ship quotas).
Aims:
- The best thing about it would be factions being able to react to hostility quicker, without increasing quotas too much (want an RRF already). They just need to have a fleet homebased to the send module
- This would also mean player needs to maintain a smaller asset count.
- Grant carriers some more purpose, as only they can carry over a real fleet with a single jump
- Allow personal use JD from mid game and up
- Reduced impact on balancing and existing mechanics
- Needs some form of commitment by not being able to return or jump away

[dtpsprt]

Guys, just cool down and give it some thought:

What is the difference between a ship entering via a Jump Gate or accelerator and a ship Jumping into it?
The answer is none. The ship is in this position, where, supposedly, your Defence Station is covering. Add a cool down period that the ship can not jump out of the sector and it is even more trapped than one entering via the Jump Gate.
Adding to this the (known from X3, yes that "faulty" game) "fact" that accelerators can not act as Jump anchor points (keeping with the lore) and fuel limitations for the number of systems that can be jumped (Energy cells may be cheaper, this game is not characterised for the lack or presence of money, but Stations who sell them are plenty so no bottleneck for "fuel" supply. only thing need to be made "from scratch" (existed in a way in X Rebirth) is a "special" cargo hold for said Energy Cells limiting and therefor balancing the range a ship can jump.

Oh... and BTW while a player can decide if he/she'll use Jump Drives, or Teleportation, or fly personally, or be flown by an NPC while managing stuff it's the player's choice in their own game, played in their own computer that can not interact with anybody else's. So, what's the fuss about not using Jump Drives? What is so important that makes the players limit their choices from something that already existed? I really don't get it. As a person I'm always for freedom of choice (even have some arrests and bans from attending school to show for it, a nice "memento" from my home grown dictatorship).

EDIT: For those that it was not made clear enough, jumping only to Jump Gates (unable to use accelerators for jumps) makes, for example, Jumping in the GE complex in total only in three points, not each one of it's subsystems.

[lordmuck]

All except the jump modules on stations. I would say they should be jump beacons we can lay down + they are attackable and don't have a lot of hp, M sized ships and larger can place them down. The player (as I doubt the NPC factions are intelligent enough) can place them down where ever, if we are in hostile territory, perhaps the faction could "prioritise" the jump beacon.
Jump beacons can be made or bought at a trading station / warfs for rearming.

Also, those that don't want it, don't need to use it.. and don't need to give us an anxiety attack waiting for L / XL ships to do something.

[chew-ie]

I don't want the JD being a part of the gameplay [again]. Egosoft should use their limited time on more pressing matters - e.g. teaching the AI to move fleets around without blinking through sectors.

The removal of the JD was the important part in order to bring more strategy into the x universe. X:Rebirth showed the first steps of an improvment - ships weren't able to just jump away. But it also showed that the cheap answer for restricting the JD (aka jump buoy) wasn't a good one - the "allowed jump targets" created bottlenecks where dozens of ships were spawned and both the AI and the player had to navigate out of those piles of ships. Having X4 fleet structures & sizes, those bottlenecks would become even worse.

Those who need a JD should mod it into their own games - with all the "balancing" they need.

[dtpsprt]

I don't want the JD being a part of the gameplay [again]. Egosoft should use their limited time on more pressing matters - e.g. teaching the AI to move fleets around without blinking through sectors.

This thing is just not possible without reworking the Travel Drive from the beginning and either allowing L and XL ships to use the Highways or eliminate them completely (the Highways not the ships) so I don't see such a thing happening in the ear future (2-3 years). And that is not even mentioning the trouble L and XL ships have passing through Accelerators. This is the "old" Commonwealth, where did they find the Accelerators and the Highways? They were a Jonferco - Plutarch thing and these two were left behind in X Rebirth. Commonwealth always used Jump Gates.

The removal of the JD was the important part in order to bring more strategy into the x universe. X:Rebirth showed the first steps of an improvment - ships weren't able to just jump away. But it also showed that the cheap answer for restricting the JD (aka jump buoy) wasn't a good one - the "allowed jump targets" created bottlenecks where dozens of ships were spawned and both the AI and the player had to navigate out of those piles of ships. Having X4 fleet structures & sizes, those bottlenecks would become even worse.

Which strategy? I see it totally diminished. All you need is build your first Wharf, have the billions coming and flood the Universe with Fleets. Now there is no bottleneck in the Jump Points (of course if everybody jumps in the same spot all the trafic of the system will have to go through there, using Jump Gates to anchor you spread this load in two, three or four, depending on how many are there in the system) but (what's even worse IMHO) bottleneck in the CPU (the modular stations add to this of course but, at least, some of them are nice to look at).

Those who need a JD should mod it into their own games - with all the "balancing" they need.

Valid point except, as I said above, I think that all the efforts of "fixing" the AI will fail, so I would prefer this effort and time (actually it would take a small portion of it since everything already exists, i.e. the Gates and as I said no Jump Beacons) to be spent in just adjusting the code of X3 in it's good points (can't remember any bottleneck there) and (hopefully) fixing the human faces and the way they stand (if this is not fixed with two more "sources" of humans coming in the next DLC there is going to be some ugliness - to say the least - contest). Then people always (even since X-Tension) had the option to use the Jump Drive or not, with all the benefits not using it might have.

P.S. The Xenon only used it for plot purposes. They always come through the gates... It was the Khaak that were using it as their main means of transportation from one system to the other, now they are a joke (still).

[Gween]

The removal of the JD was the important part in order to bring more strategy into the x universe. X:Rebirth showed the first steps of an improvment - ships weren't able to just jump away.

As long as it's possible to "save-scum" there's no real strategy involved... What makes jumping out of a lost battle worse than reloading to the point before the battle started?
And as many people stated already, there are a lot of ways to implement a JD (or a replacementsystem for it) without giving you the ability to jump out of every dangerous situation

[jlehtone]

As long as it's possible to "save-scum" there's no real strategy involved...

Do you imply that the player is one of the most significant problems that the game has?

[Slashman]

As long as it's possible to "save-scum" there's no real strategy involved...

Do you imply that the player is one of the most significant problems that the game has?

I believe that is exactly what he is implying.

Also...since players swill get access to cap ships eventually anyway just by simply trying, I think we should start the game in a fully kitted out Raptor with all the fighter bays full of kitted out Chimeras. I mean players will get them anyway...why not just give them and be done with it?

[Gween]

As long as it's possible to "save-scum" there's no real strategy involved...

Do you imply that the player is one of the most significant problems that the game has?

No, I'm just saying that all strategic "exploits" a JD would introduce already exist and it's called "saving whenever you want"
Don't get me wrong, I like saving when I feel like it and not when the game feels like it, but it just completely negates the argument that a JD would "ruin strategy"

[Gween]

As long as it's possible to "save-scum" there's no real strategy involved...

Do you imply that the player is one of the most significant problems that the game has?

I believe that is exactly what he is implying.

Also...since players swill get access to cap ships eventually anyway just by simply trying, I think we should start the game in a fully kitted out Raptor with all the fighter bays full of kitted out Chimeras. I mean players will get them anyway...why not just give them and be done with it?

Very funny, but completely unrelated to the topic and the exact opposite to what I described...

[GCU Grey Area]

No, I'm just saying that all strategic "exploits" a JD would introduce already exist and it's called "saving whenever you want"
Don't get me wrong, I like saving when I feel like it and not when the game feels like it, but it just completely negates the argument that a JD would "ruin strategy"

What a ludicrous thing to say. There are numerous strategic exploits available with a jumpdrive (e.g. bypassing enemy fleets to go straight for a high value target such as a shipyard) that no amount of reverting to an earlier save would accomplish.

[Gween]

What a ludicrous thing to say. There are numerous strategic exploits available with a jumpdrive (e.g. bypassing enemy fleets to go straight for a high value target such as a shipyard) that no amount of reverting to an earlier save would accomplish.

You mean a fleet you could only know about, when you've either
a) been there shortly before you move your fleet (aka scouting, which means taking a risk and if you die, you can just reload.)
b) have satellites there (which the enemy fleet should destroy anyway)
c) sent your fleet in, which got completely obliterated by the enemy fleet -> reload ->build more ships in your personal shipyard which can spit out as many ships as you want anyway in lategame.

Your specific example with the shipyard brings up a whole other problem the game has. Why is such a high value target not protected by a fleet? But that's a topic for another post.

And many people have already mentioned ways of implementations where such a thing is not possible... Like Jump beacon station modules, or the loss of shield/weapon energy after you arrive at the target.
You prove exactly what someone in this post already criticized:
You hear "jumpdrive" and instantly think of the exploitable and broken version we had in X2 and X3, forgetting that there are many possible options to make it not exploitable and only have it as a quality of life feature

[Tamina]

The only thing this convinces me off, is this game needing an Iron Man mode or something similar.