ralph_hh wrote:But: Wouldn't it scare new Jamesons away if they can't find a way to escape the enemy fleets?
That's an issue with the way the game is set up, and is better addressed by modifying the design. New commanders should be able to (and, in my experience with 1.80, generally can) avoid trouble by sticking to safer systems; running away at the first sign of trouble, dodging and weaving as they go; and dumping a few TCs of food to buy off pirates when absolutely necessary. New commanders should not expect to be able to head off just anywhere: there should be safe places, not-so-safe places, and actively dangerous places. Currently, though, going off-lane makes it possible for anybody, new commanders included, to travel and trade wherever they like, for little or no risk: that's broken, in my opinion.
ralph_hh wrote:I'd think that maybe for beginners sake, a new Jameson could start at a Democratic Planet with equally peacefull planes close by. Tune down the pirate numbers in Democracies, so you have a beginners paradise. Or establish a Gal Cop enforced safe zone in lower left of Galaxy 1.
That, or something similar, is a possibility: again, it requires a little bit of player-centricity.
Smivs wrote:I think the current system is about right. It is entirely logical that most traffic would take the direct route, and therefore that is where the pirates are likely to be.
Personally, I think it would be more logical for everyone to avoid the places where the pirates are: most voyages aren't so massively time-important that it's worth risking destruction just to save an hour or two (and if they were, logically, most traders would refuse the job, and renegotiate the time limit: there are only so many people willing to risk death to make a delivery). But like I said, I don't think logic has anything to do with this. We want to make sure that the game happens: at the moment, it only happens in a tube of space running from the WP to the planet/station. Going off-lane is a massive exploit which invalidates the idea that some systems are safe and some are dangerous, and that some journeys should be carefully planned to avoid trouble spots. Currently, none of that matters: just go off-lane.
Smivs wrote:Remove the Torus drive from the game and this problem would be fixed. Yes, it would, but does anybody really want to lose Torus? No, of course not.
I do. If we could replace the Torus with a TAF it would solve a whole load of problems. But we've been through this before and it doesn't seem to be a practical solution, not least due to AI issues and collision detection.
I agree that adding in thousands of extra entities into the game would not be practical. I think the sensible solution would be to automagically create enemies off-lane (similar to the Deep Space Pirates OXP, but with the option of chucking some Thargoids in there too), who might possibly have the ability to call in support of their own. That way, the lane would exist because it is patrolled, by Vipers and by the traders themselves, and because striking out off-lane on your own is potentially
more dangerous. Again, this could vary from system to system: you can go off-lane in a Corporate State or Democracy without much risk of any hostile encounter (Thargoids excepted, perhaps); but try the same trick in a Feudal or Anarchy system and you'll very probably get swarmed.
Another alternative would be to make the Torus only work when the compass is pointing at some sort of beacon. This would make going off-lane harder, although players could still work around this by, say, aiming at the sun, torusing off in that direction for a bit, then aiming at the planet/station. This would depend on where the sun was, of course. But this has potential consequences for people who want to head off towards e.g. a distant asteroid.
There's an issue with how these would work with OXP stations: it might require some method of creating new lanes which run from nav point to nav point. It would also have to cope with sunskimming.
Venator Dha wrote:I personally agree that it's a loophole in the standard game and dislike it. Having a player orientated solution, as an OXP is probably the only way to resolve this.
There are a lot of potential issues here, and I know that the devs have been playing around with a number of ideas (although I don't know what conclusions they've come to). But I think that going off-lane is a massive exploit which punches a great big hole through the middle of the game, and it's something which we should try to resolve at the core-game level.