Hyperspace: Time of flight

Post by **Cmdr James** » Sat May 08, 2010 8:37 pm

For a misjump we currently use the same amount of fuel as for the attempted full jump.

We also take the same amount of time for the misjump as for the attempted jump. I think it makes sense for this time to be a distance based calculation, what do the rest of you think?

This would mean that a misjump would be faster than a full jump, but would continue to take the full amount of fuel.

Website · Post by **Cody** » Sat May 08, 2010 8:48 pm

I'd never noticed the time factor in mis-jumps... too busy dealing with Thargoids.

Your suggestion makes a lot of sense.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Sat May 08, 2010 8:49 pm

I like it - gets my vote.

ADCK · Post by **ADCK** » Sat May 08, 2010 10:11 pm

I agree about the part about time, but perhaps the fuel is consumed opening the "gateway" to witchspace, not during the voyage through the vortex. If you happen to leave the vortex before arriving at your intended destination (a misjump) then you've simply wasted fuel

Post by **Cmdr James** » Sat May 08, 2010 10:14 pm

Correct, that is current behavior.

My view is that fuel is required to open wormhole, but time of flight should be distance related.

JazHaz · Post by **JazHaz** » Sat May 08, 2010 11:24 pm

Cmdr James wrote:
My view is that fuel is required to open wormhole, but time of flight should be distance related.

But then, surely, the amount of fuel to open the wormhole should be the same each time?

Post by **Cmdr James** » Sat May 08, 2010 11:27 pm

No, it depends on the length of the wormhole. It is indepenant upon the number of ships etc. which pass through it, and once opened if there is a problem the fuel is not recoverable.

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Sun May 09, 2010 2:07 am

DaddyHoggy wrote:
I like it - gets my vote.

Mine too.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Sun May 09, 2010 2:22 am

The suggestion does sound sensible to me.

Post by **Disembodied** » Sun May 09, 2010 11:17 am

Makes sense to me ... you've spent the fuel to punch a wormhole of X light-years, but it takes time to traverse. If you fall out half-way through then it's reasonable to assume you've only been inside the pipe for half the usual amount of time.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Sun May 09, 2010 11:36 am

Disembodied wrote:
If you fall out half-way through then it's reasonable to assume you've only been inside the pipe for half the usual amount of time.

That would be reasonable, but there is a catch. Time goes with square of distance, so going half the distance requires only a quarter of the time (that's why multiple short jumps take less time in total than one big jump).

Now, do we want to apply this principle to misjumps as well? I think that needs some more reasoning. Effectively this would mean that making a misjump to your destination (1/4 of total time) and then jumping the rest of the way (1/4 of total time) would spare you half the time the complete jump would take. While this would be in line with the overall jump handling, it would nevertheless be a change of the game mechanics as we know them.

I think halving the time for the whole distance wouldn't be a problem, and we could find some handwave explanation for it anyway. And it would feel fair and balanced to me. But would we want to give the player a time-advantage from misjumps? That wouldn't feel balanced, just from a gameplay point of view.

Post by **Disembodied** » Sun May 09, 2010 12:12 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
That would be reasonable, but there is a catch. Time goes with square of distance, so going half the distance requires only a quarter of the time (that's why multiple short jumps take less time in total than one big jump).

Now, do we want to apply this principle to misjumps as well? I think that needs some more reasoning. Effectively this would mean that making a misjump to your destination (1/4 of total time) and then jumping the rest of the way (1/4 of total time) would spare you half the time the complete jump would take. While this would be in line with the overall jump handling, it would nevertheless be a change of the game mechanics as we know them.

I think halving the time for the whole distance wouldn't be a problem, and we could find some handwave explanation for it anyway. And it would feel fair and balanced to me. But would we want to give the player a time-advantage from misjumps? That wouldn't feel balanced, just from a gameplay point of view.

I think halving the time makes sense, from a gameplay point of view (as you say, it would seem unbalanced to give players an advantage for misjumping). It could also be made to make sense from a logical point of view, too, if we jump up and down on it a bit.

How about this: to travel 6 light-years, you have to punch a "deep" wormhole that will take you 6^2, or 36 hours to traverse. Because it's a "deep" wormhole, if you fall out half-way through, even though you've been inside for 18 hours you will have only travelled 3 light-years. If you'd only wanted to jump 3 light-years in the first place, then the wormhole you would have created would have followed a "shallower" hyperspatial curve and would have only taken 9 hours to traverse.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Sun May 09, 2010 12:27 pm

Disembodied wrote:

I think halving the time makes sense, from a gameplay point of view (as you say, it would seem unbalanced to give players an advantage for misjumping). It could also be made to make sense from a logical point of view, too, if we jump up and down on it a bit.

How about this: to travel 6 light-years, you have to punch a "deep" wormhole that will take you 6^2, or 36 hours to traverse. Because it's a "deep" wormhole, if you fall out half-way through, even though you've been inside for 18 hours you will have only travelled 3 light-years. If you'd only wanted to jump 3 light-years in the first place, then the wormhole you would have created would have followed a "shallower" hyperspatial curve and would have only taken 9 hours to traverse.

That's what I was going to suggest but noticed you'd posted almost word for word what I was going to type - spooky!

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sun May 09, 2010 12:34 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
I think halving the time for the whole distance wouldn't be a problem, and we could find some handwave explanation for it anyway. And it would feel fair and balanced to me. But would we want to give the player a time-advantage from misjumps? That wouldn't feel balanced, just from a gameplay point of view.

That’s a very good point. It would effectively introduce an exploit for timed missions, which is unacceptable, so I’m with handwaving.

Post by **Cmdr James** » Sun May 09, 2010 2:37 pm

I think its fairly obvious from the distance to time relationship that speed of travel through witchspace is not linear.

As any physics student can tell you, in witchspace the speed of motion of an object multiplied by the length of the wormhole is a constant. Expressed in Light years per hour, the value of the constant is 1.

For a journey twice as far, the average speed of travel through the wormhole is halved.

For a wormhole of length 1 LY, the average speed of travel is 1 LY/Hour, for a journeytime of 1 H.

A wormhole of length 2LY has an average speed of 0.5 LY/Hour => 4Hour

A wormhole of 4LY, speed 0.25LY/H => 16 Hours.

If you abandon a flight of 4 LY half way, you were travelling around 0.25LY/Hour for 2LY meaning it took 8 hours.