spara wrote:Disembodied wrote:
There is also a gameplay issue: if NPCs get a torus drive subject to masslock, then we will get a great big masslocked traffic jam in every system. Every new arrival will zoom in until they bump into the back of the previous ship, and so on.
That's why there would be need for a new AI that would make a 90 degree turn to get out of
the mass lock and then turn to
the correct heading and torus, just like a
player might do.
All
the technical problems aside, I think
the gameplay effects of NPCs with torus drives would be so large that it would require a lot more than that.
Two pirates lurk on
the lane: a Cobra III and an Asp. Along comes
the player, and is masslocked.
The pirates attack. As
the fight begins, a Boa with three escorts arrives at
the WP, hits its torus (which has been fiddled with to allow escorts, which is something else to keep track of - who's in what group, who masslocks who and who doesn't), and bumps into
the back of
the fight. They turn 90° and start to move away. And then an Anaconda convoy arrives, turns 90° in another direction, and begins to slowly move away.
The fight, meanwhile, moves back and forth across
the lane. A lone Python trader arrives.
The player zaps
the Cobra III, which spills some canisters, attracting
the scavenging attentions of
the Python. Then a Viper patrol arrives, who all dive in and attack
the Asp. Outnumbered,
the Asp tries to flee, in another direction. There's now a large and expanding cloud of ships, all masslocking each other, spread across
the spacelane. A Cobra III trader arrives, toruses in, gets masslocked, and also gets interested in
the canisters. And so on. Ships will arrive far faster than they can get away. Eventually (possibly quite quickly)
the masslock jam stretches all
the way back to
the WP, which is now surrounded by a big ball of ships all moving at 90° to
the spacelane. At
the other end, meanwhile, another big masslocked ball begins to form as some ships start to arrive at, and get masslocked by,
the station. Of course, this can be mitigated by drastically reducing
the volume of system traffic - which is a major gameplay change.
The question for any gameplay change should be, "Is this more fun?" If it's not more fun, then it shouldn't be changed.
The torus drive is a wangle designed to allow
the human
player to cross large distances of space without expiring from boredom, and
the masslock is a wangle designed to prevent
the player from using their torus to scoot away from anything they don't want to meet. There is no need to
give these
player-only features to NPCs.
Would it be more immersive - more fun - if players and NPCs existed on a more level playing field, rather than
the player having a magic drive that
the NPCs don't? Perhaps:
the only good answer to this, though, is a fully functioning TAF, which is a major technical problem.