cim wrote:I think the problem is just how long it would take. A Rock Hermit 500km away is at about the limit of visibility - you can think "ah, that's what that NPC is heading for". On torus drive - once you've cleared the NPC's masslock - that's about 1 minute's travel. It'll take the NPC 30 minutes to get there. It has the patience for that, but I don't think the player will. It's four minutes on injectors - bearable, but it'll also cost you most of a tank.
And it doesn't really solve "torus towards sun for a little way, then switch to the planet" as a means of getting off-lane. The limitations on destination feel rather "point of interest" to me...
You're right - and I didn't think of
the sun-then-planet exploit. Bugger! That felt like I was on to something there ...
cim wrote:Switching from "torus" to the older 8-bit "inter-space jump" would make it easier - advance the clock by the time it would have taken to cross that distance manually at high speed (maybe only injector speed?), and allow other groups in range the option to jump to the same destination. Jumps could then either be towards compass targets, or just generally forwards (to a fixed maximum distance, perhaps 100km, interrupted by large masses on the way?). We could then even let NPCs with no reason to be stealthy make their own jumps and give the player the option to intercept, perhaps requiring a bit of equipment. ... and, just like the original Elite, making an "inter-space jump" in an Anarchy is likely to pull down a whole bunch of pirates on to your position. That would be a huge change in terms of the feel of the game, though, and I'm not at all convinced by it.
Yes, same here: I think this might be a step too far towards
player-centrism. Admittedly,
the problem exists because of
the totally
player-centric torus, but
the only way around that is a TAF (or TAF-equivalent mini-jump), crucially though without any masslocking - which is such a major game mechanic that getting rid of it would almost mean producing a new game. It could be done, if, say, each mini-jump took ~15 seconds to wind up, and maybe required a little bit of
player fiddling-about to start - and if it didn't work when
the player was moving, or taking damage: that way
the game wouldn't need
the masslock to keep
the player pinned by hostile ships. But it would be a massive change.
cim wrote:Norby wrote:Much more logical if pirates lay mass-lock nets. I like this idea but to cover the main tube thickly enough to ususally prevent crossing with injectors before a pirate group can arrive exceed the current limit of space objects in a system (2048).
If they have
the resources to lay that sort of net - even just a partial one - and not have it cleared out by
the local police or vulnerable to being destroyed by a trader's escorts before
the pirates can show up, they can probably just blockade
the witchpoint. And, admittedly, in some systems they
can probably just blockade
the witchpoint...
Masslock nets are probably
the easiest way to go here:
the only change it would require would be a bit of AI, to adjust a net-pirate's behaviour: keep
the player masslocked, and don't engage until other ships arrive and
the odds improve (if
the player could see
the pirate broadcasting a signal to
the rest of
the pack, too, that would add to
the effect: plus it would
give a swift and accurate
player a possible escape route from
the net).
A net would take a bit of effort to lay, but it wouldn't need to be more than partial, and it wouldn't need to be always there: there would be a chance that a
player running off-lane might get caught in a net, and that chance would be something
the player would have to factor in when making that choice. In e.g. a Dictatorship system there might only be a 20% chance of a net being there at all, and even if it's there,
the player might get lucky and dodge it.
Laying a net wold be a lot easier than blockading a witchpoint: you'll avoid meeting big, well-defended convoys, and
the ships who do stray into
the net will probably be solitary, and carrying something valuable that needs to get somewhere in a hurry.
The prime locations for
the net would be off either end of
the lane: near to
the witchpoint, or near to
the station (but obviously not too near).