Jumping frog

[Vaylon]

A lot of people were unhappy when Egosoft fixed the bug that allowed you to skip the countdown to jumping in the 1.3 patch so I just wanted to see if we could come up with sometime better for The Return.

My idea would be to change the countdown time to be in relation to how far a ship would have to jump. So in sector jumps would be 10% of what they are now 1-3 sectors would be 20-30% and large cross Universe jumps 200% of what they are now. The idea is that the drive does not have to fully charge for short jumps and the time taken should take in to account time needed to; calculate all known factors, plot a jump course and lock on to gates.

It really does seem dumb taking so long to do a short cross sector jump when in the same amount of time you cross the Universe. I know instant jumping whould not fit in to the game and was the reason it was taken out but what we have now is just as bad.

-NJ

[pjknibbs]

You do realise you can activate SETA to speed up the countdown in 1.4, right?

[Ferd Harling]

So if your in truble, activate a jump & SETA

[Vaylon]

That only speeds up time, not the countdown. That’s not the fix I’m looking for. Ships still take fire while SETA is on. The idea is to be able to use the jump drive as a defence also and making it more realist at the same time.

I think a lot of people here using TS ships would like the idea. It would also mean you would pick what sectors to jump to more carefully when doing trade runs.

-NJ

[wellard]

I always liked the idea that instant jumps were possible, but risky. If you used it you risked destroying the jump dirve and/or various bits of ship hardware (possibly including hull damage) and/or being thrown to a random sector. Of course you might also get away with it.

Sort of absolute emergency escape.

Wellard.

[Ferd Harling]

@wellard

That sounds like the real "Elite" where you can miis-jump & end up in Wich space & encounter the Thargoids.

[wellard]

Same idea but with an X-verse take on it. After all thats how Brennan got there in the first place

Wellard

[Ferd Harling]

So it would mix with the game & plot very well! (Devs take note, please) . . .

[Pinger]

If your not going to die sometimes wheres the Difficulty? If you could in-sector jump in a second whats the point? Just script your self some more speed or better weapons.

[wellard]

@Pinger,

It's an interesting point you raise really. The premise on the plot and game in general is that you (the character) never dies.

However, I think many (if not most) people would reload if their ship suffered heavy damage due to misjump (especially if we're talking M6 and bigger). In addition I think many people would fight to the death without jumping anyway, the key presses are also a little awkward in a hectic situation (shift J, shift J whilst being hit with Kyons may cost you the valuable seconds you need to survive),

There is also the possiblility of ending up in a Xenon or Khaak sector in a crippled ship with random damage and a destroyed jump drive - life expectancy rather low. but a definite challenge.

Finally, you can save at any time in space by buying salvage insurance at 3000 creds per hit allowing infinite attempts at any situation until it works. This idea provides a more novel way "save your skin" but at the cost of the jumpdrive plus other fittings on your ship. It might even make an entertaining replacement for salvage insurance.

Wellard.

On another point could the goners or others offer slavage insurance for people operating in pirate/split space. If your caught it buys you back.
Sorry, a typo gave me the idea.

[NullAshton]

Thought you could still dodge shots while using the jump drive... The jumpdrive 'locks' on to a gate, and makes one end of a warp tunnel. Distance doesn't really matter when locking on, only alters the energy costs... And I've always thought of a jump drive as being used as a way to get around, not to pop out of a system when you're getting your butt kicked. Maybe you could have a slider to balance the drive between energy efficency, and time efficency? A jump that takes little time to escape from a fight, takes a whole lot of energy cells. A jump that takes a long time to jump, takes very few energy cells.

[Zmey]

Maybe you could have a slider to balance the drive between energy efficency, and time efficency?

A slider to balance the energy between your engine, shields and your weaponry would be more logical. Want better speed - feed all the output of your power generators to the engine, which makes you fly faster, but leaves you with lower shields and fainting lasers... Or - on the opposite - you could move the slider towards the shields/weapons, which will make you a slow, but well-protected and aggressive target.

[Mattremote]

I suppose I have been lucky enough not to have to use the Jumpdrive to escape, and often use the countdown period to adjust the weaponry on my ship for the sector or mission to which I am flying...

[pjknibbs]

I think the whole point of this is that Egosoft doesn't WANT you to use the jumpdrive as a quick escape--you should be using the THINK part of the game's motto and not getting into a situation where you have to do this! The "instant activation" of the jumpdrive in 1.3 was a bug--it only existed in that version, and was removed quickly once the mistake was realised.

[Hachiman]

The idea is to be able to use the jump drive as a defence also and making it more realist at the same time.

Maybe your are in the wrong fight?

[Vaylon]

I knew I should have worded that better What I was pointing out is that the jumpdrive could be used for more than one thing this way and a quick escape is only one part of that. As I said if your in to combat and like a fight your more likely not to use it anyway as like me you fight to the death but after viewing some other posts here a lot of the traders feel left out of the game because they don't want much combat in their games, this would be an ideal idea for them.

Another use for this version of the jump drive would be when taking BBS haulage missions and TP missions people would have to use the THINK part of the game more to decide if it's worth doing a short jump that takes little time and maybe not get the best price or weather to do two medium jumps or one long range jump and get the best price but at the cost of time which counts in the BBS missions.

As for Egosoft not wanting people to misuse it as a quick way out of trouble, look at it this way; Someone gets jumped by a khack cluster in a damaged slow TS ship is dead 9/10 and will reload the game and then avoid where the khack cluster is going to pop up and that’s more of a game spoiler than a more realist jump drive in my book any day. It's like why bother ejecting from your ship if it's about to blow up when you will get killed 0.1 second right after the ship by one shot! There are very few options traders can use rather than combat. For those of you who about to say they can survive a mega cluster in a damaged dolphin with one 25 shield by using strafe then think about it this way, the strafe drive is also a buggy system in X2, no way should a ship be able to strafe faster that it's main engines for prolonged periods of time. (Like from one end of the sector to the other!) Plus the fact the AI targeting does not take strafing in to account when firing and will always miss a ship using a strafe drive (Apart from some beam weapons)

Look at the Elite games, the jumpdrive there took the same amount of time to open a wormhole but the time taken to travel from one point to the next was sometimes weeks or months. In X2 a cross sector jump takes an 11 second countdown and 1 second jump time. A jump from one star system in one galaxy to another star system in another galaxy on the other side of the X Universe takes (oh what a surprise!) an 11 second countdown and 1 second jump time!

What I'm proposing is an added feature to the game which will take almost no time to build in to the game engine as it's already there to start with but will allow players more freedom in the way they can play their game and has no balancing issues to deal with.

-NJ

[Alairon]

Maybe you could have a slider to balance the drive between energy efficency, and time efficency?

A slider to balance the energy between your engine, shields and your weaponry would be more logical. Want better speed - feed all the output of your power generators to the engine, which makes you fly faster, but leaves you with lower shields and fainting lasers... Or - on the opposite - you could move the slider towards the shields/weapons, which will make you a slow, but well-protected and aggressive target.

X-wing style, that would be pretty cool - i mean u have a power generator, how come we cant toggle where it distributes its power...

Hell that would be extremely sweet, pull the power from the lasers of the mammoth (who the hell uses them anyway, except for mining purposes)

[MAD_COMMANDER]

what i can't get round is that you own an M1 or M2 and use jumpdrive alot why is ther eno way to store spares for you drive? it would be cool in a fight between to equal foes to have a your jumpdrive go ofline like a warp drive in star-trek and send jorfie laforge down to the engine room to fix it.... once you order you nitwit crew memeber to fix the part mat it be a jump drive or boost extention. a little blue or red or any colour bar to come up with a estimated fix time depping on how servere the battle is and that it doesn't completely distroyed during the on going battle.... Rather than JUMP DRIVE DESTROYED when you shields go down for 2 secs

Maybe a little to indepth? would make battles hard to control if you had to repair all the time whilest still battling

yes i know its a good idea to store a jumpdrive in M3 wingman but thats another ship when you crew should be thinking ahead and bringing spare parts

They do that on nearly every SCI-FI series from B5 to TNG

[Fireseen]

Maybe you could have a slider to balance the drive between energy efficency, and time efficency?

A slider to balance the energy between your engine, shields and your weaponry would be more logical. Want better speed - feed all the output of your power generators to the engine, which makes you fly faster, but leaves you with lower shields and fainting lasers... Or - on the opposite - you could move the slider towards the shields/weapons, which will make you a slow, but well-protected and aggressive target.

X-wing style, that would be pretty cool - i mean u have a power generator, how come we cant toggle where it distributes its power...

Hell that would be extremely sweet, pull the power from the lasers of the mammoth (who the hell uses them anyway, except for mining purposes)

I don't know about X-wing, but it worked well in Freespace 2


*Very minor spoilers (I guess) for Freespace 2 ahead*

Put all power into engines to boost over to a bomber wing attacking one of your mission-critical transports, equalize all three systems and shoot down the torpedos the bombers launched, drain the power from shields dump it into engine and weapons to go after the bombers (they don't shoot much).


Or just go up to a Destroyer in your own bomber, maximise shields to get through the Flack/Anti-Fighter Beams/lasers/engine wash, transfer half the power to engines, boost towards the target and, after getting a target-lock, launch your torpedos. If target is very low on health, put full power to engines and hope your burners last till you get out of the blast area of the exploding capital ship.


Yeah, I just got finished playing through Freespace 2

That was a bit off topic, but I couldn't resist.

[pjknibbs]

Hell that would be extremely sweet, pull the power from the lasers of the mammoth (who the hell uses them anyway, except for mining purposes)

I doubt a ship the size of a Mammoth uses much energy for its guns compared to the engines anyway, so I doubt it'd make much difference. In smaller ships then yes, the proportions may be more even!