How Does Avoiding the Spacelanes Break Gameplay?

[Astrobe]

But the Torus drive has been in the game since (I think) the BBC version - it was certainly part of the first IBM compatible release - and I can't see it going away, on runs without opposition the game is just too slow without it.

Has anyone ever made an "NPCs have Torus drive" add-on? It'd be interesting to see how much difference it really makes.

I've heard of an experimental branch featuring it.

I also don't like them so I'm always looking for a way to get rid of it. From my experiments, on the main lane being able to use the injectors for a longer time could be good enough - I made an OXP that drastically reduces the full consumption of the injectors but instantly drains your shields. The problem is with the very long distances like going to the sun (esp. with Distant Suns and the like). Solutions like "space rail roads" have also been discussed and/or tested.

[spara]

I understand perfectly well that to make the game work as a game and to create drama etc, NPCs need to interact with each other. To make that happen, they need to fly on lanes. But this does not overrule the fact that by flying the lanes NPCs act quite stupidly. The lanes are the most dangerous places in system. I don't see why anyone would want to fly on them. You get a lot better protection in empty space than flying on lane.

Torus makes me a god of the Ooniverse. I can fly at ludicrous speed and no one can catch me. Ever. .

And yes, you could "torus" in the original Elite, but it was really just fastforwarding the game as you could not skip encounters with it. In Oolite, it lets you skip all encounters and reach the planet in a very short time.

These issues have been discussed in great detail in the past and the best solution for torus would be to replace it with time acceleration. That has been said to be basically impossible because of the way AI works. Time acceleration would skip frames and make AI do strange things or something like that.

For the lanes and empty space dilemma, I think the best compromise is DeepSpacePirates or something like that. It makes the game more player centric, but it keeps encounters happening and the game interesting.

I think it's an interesting exercise to think how the ships would really travel from the witchpoint buoy to the main station in a real life situation with the technology presented in game. I don't believe they would fly in a straight lane if they don't need to conserve fuel. The beaten track would be the most perilous route.

[phkb]

The beaten track would be the most perilous route.

At least until all the pirates move off-lane to catch all the traders who are now going off-lane, which would then leave the lane as the safest place.

Until the pirates got wind of this change in behaviour and headed back to the lane to catch all the smarties who have reverted back to their original behaviour.

After which they all decide to go off-lane again, poking their tongues out at the tardy pirates they left back on the lane.

Then...wait sorry? I should stop now? Oh. Ok.

[spara]

The beaten track would be the most perilous route.

At least until all the pirates move off-lane to catch all the traders who are now going off-lane, which would then leave the lane as the safest place.

Until the pirates got wind of this change in behaviour and headed back to the lane to catch all the smarties who have reverted back to their original behaviour.

After which they all decide to go off-lane again, poking their tongues out at the tardy pirates they left back on the lane.

Then...wait sorry? I should stop now? Oh. Ok.

Except, of course, off-lane is way more spacious than the lane, so there would have to be a lot more pirates to get those off-line traders.

Since there does not seem to be any long range scanner technology available, the only sensible way for the pirates to hunt would be some kind of netting strategy. Possibly using drones as probes to find those juicy targets. When properly targeted then just calculate an intercept course and ambush. Luckily the player would have his/her torus to outrun all the bad guys .

[Day]

The beaten track would be the most perilous route.

This is totally counter-intuitive to me. As commerce is essential to systems economies, they have to secure the commercial roads around them. This is done through pseudo-military means: army and police.
The least costly / most efficient way to secure a road is to reduce its perimeter and "interdict" it to bad elements.

So I'm expecting that the space lanes are protected, that insurance companies measure the stats of attacks, that armies use this as data to plan their positions and interventions, etc.

So, to me the space lanes must be the most secure.

[spara]

The beaten track would be the most perilous route.

This is totally counter-intuitive to me. As commerce is essential to systems economies, they have to secure the commercial roads around them. This is done through pseudo-military means: army and police.
The least costly / most efficient way to secure a road is to reduce its perimeter and "interdict" it to bad elements.

So I'm expecting that the space lanes are protected, that insurance companies measure the stats of attacks, that armies use this as data to plan their positions and interventions, etc.

So, to me the space lanes must be the most secure.

It's counter intuitive if you think about earth and roads. If you think about infinite space and finite number of entities, then it makes sense. It's so easy to disappear into space and no one will find you. Traveling the lane makes it too easy for the bad guys. They just wait along the lane and choose the juiciest targets.

[Day]

The beaten track would be the most perilous route.

This is totally counter-intuitive to me. As commerce is essential to systems economies, they have to secure the commercial roads around them. This is done through pseudo-military means: army and police.
The least costly / most efficient way to secure a road is to reduce its perimeter and "interdict" it to bad elements.

So I'm expecting that the space lanes are protected, that insurance companies measure the stats of attacks, that armies use this as data to plan their positions and interventions, etc.

So, to me the space lanes must be the most secure.

It's counter intuitive if you think about earth and roads. If you think about infinite space and finite number of entities, then it makes sense. It's so easy to disappear into space and no one will find you. Traveling the lane makes it too easy for the bad guys. They just wait along the lane and choose the juiciest targets.

If I understand you well, you say that leaving after having struck, and in a small part waiting for the right target without being detected (the bad guy part), is a lot easier/cheaper than reacting to the attack and destroying the attacker, even when executed by lots of ships, or some military flotillas (the good guys).

I'm ready to consider it

But wouldn't that mean that in case of space wars, guerilla fighters are bigly advantaged, and that battles between groups of fighters depend more on their initiative (in the RPG sense) and their ability to fight together rather than their numbers and destruction power?

Maybe a summary would be that ships are frail and deadly, which favors the attackers against the defenders?

[spara]

I actually mean that if this was a realistic game with realistically acting NPCs, basically nobody would ever encounter anybody because the space is so big. Except around space stations and buoys of course. And the game would be deadly boring.

Actually occasionally seeing a loner ship equipped with torus using the player strategy of skipping the lane would greatly improve immersion.

[Disembodied]

I actually mean that if this was a realistic game with realistically acting NPCs, basically nobody would ever encounter anybody because the space is so big. Except around space stations and buoys of course. And the game would be deadly boring.

Actually occasionally seeing a loner ship equipped with torus using the player strategy of skipping the lane would greatly improve immersion.

This is a core problem of all space games: how do you make space seem vast, while still making travel times acceptable (e.g. the average Earth-Mars distance is roughly 12.5 light minutes; the average Earth-Neptune distance is nearly 4 light hours), AND allow ships to interact?

[Cmdr James]

pirates should logically have bases way off the lane and hang about at the edge of the lane picking targets and diving in for the juicy looking ones then ferrying their haul home from time to time. maybe for some systems they would H in, make a hit then H back out.

[Cody]

In essence, they do, James - kinda. Some systems have pirate rock hermits, and formerly 'safe' systems which happen to be situated close to unsafe systems are no longer safe, due to 'raiding groups' from the aforementioned unsafe systems.

[Norby]

pirates should logically have bases way off the lane and hang about at the edge of the lane

Pirate Centres aimed to keep players on space lanes using similar pirates as a penalty, but now I think giving rewards within the lane is more effective, as in Space Lane Adherence Bonus OXP.

I'm expecting that the space lanes are protected

Yes, imho it is a common interest of locals to invite more traders into the main station. At least the good governments should spend extra money to make the witchpoint-main station route safer, building a highway in space.

For example could place a line of well shielded buoys, at half scanner range from each other. In poor systems these just send distress signals to Vipers and add bounty when see offending activities. In rich systems even could fire lasers against non-clean ships, etc.

[Day]

This thread is quite excellent.

Space is big. But the space we are interested in is the space around planetary systems
What about ships localization detection and declaration?

On our old earth, we have transponders onto every (naval) ship and plane. We even have control towers.
We have radars too, and the chinese have recently made a quantum radar (so no evasion through deflecting the wave like the B-2 stealth bomber do).

We could have mandatory transponders in corporate systems, optional transponders in, say, feudal systems, useless transponders in anarchy systems.
That way, ships are declared, and space content is better known.

We could have (gravitic?) radars which results are shared ad-hoc (like wifi) by law-abiding pilots ^^
That way, ships are detected, and space content is better known.

Using these, from the point of view of the ship commander, space isn't empty or big anymore; it's crowded and interaction are possibly frequent.

[Astrobe]

In my mind lanes exist because they are the shortest path to destination and provide some security. Either thanks to the help of other ships or thanks to Galcop patrols (which has hardly enough resources to actually secure all of it/them). Lanes are fast but they are slow because of masslocks (and we forget about masslocks, we could have speed limits and fines... But maybe that would be too "real life"?). Pirates just lurk near them, waiting for the solitary ships or small convoys on the lane, or for the courier in hurry who takes the off-lane "shortcut".

We could have (gravitic?) radars which results are shared ad-hoc (like wifi) by law-abiding pilots

It's not too far-fetch to imagine the sharing of scanner data between ships. As a result, one could have a very long range scanner created by the network of individual scanners but here is the catch: the presence of a dot on this extended scanner means that there's a ship there, but the absence of a dot doesn't mean there's nothing there because the area might not be covered. Of course, real-life engineers would mark which areas are covered and which are not, but in a game we need some spice.

It could also serve as a justification for sending Vipers to ships under attack, which would be helpful for the Jamesons or more generally, it could be a tool for when one wants to play it safe (and slow).

Other than that, scanner range could be a property of the ship. We know that the energetic cost of such a scanner is proportional to its range (if not to the cube of it if it's not using a sweeping beam technology), so longer range means more power. So very long range requires either a big ship or a specialist ship (like Awacks). But slight variations in scanner ranges could make each ship more unique.

[spara]

The only problem with all this "lanes are safer" reasoning is that they aren't. Any starting Jameson knows that it's safer to skip the lane.