Patch When? #6- Dev Diary - Jump Drives

[Aingar]

Art by @Kauket

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Oh look, another one of those! Today it's time to talk about Jump Drives! The main purpose of this rework was to make Jump Drives more accessible to use, as well as making them more epic than ending in a screen freeze and teleportation into the new location. Obviously Beacons/Matrixes and Survey Modules will also be mentioned as an intrinsic part of the current Jump Drive mechanics.

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Overview of the current state

Obviously I can't speak for anyone, but personally, despite having access to a jumpdrive for QUITE some time, I have not once used one on the live server. The idea of having to look up a coordinate table stashed on some discord pin, then have to input a lengthy 20+ symbol coordinate only to mess up and input it again. Not exactly a very thrilling experience, similar to alt-tabbing to set up AutoHotKey macro to type the coordinate for you. And then you end up 100k below the plane because the coordinates were old.
Imma be honest, unless I were going uh, Bretonia to Sigmas or something, I'd rather just engage cruise and fly manually.

Then there's the fact that Jump Drives are very boring visually. You start glowing reasonably nicely, but then you just stop, the game freezes and your ship suddenly starts existing in another spot in the universe. No cutscenes, no special effects, just a *pop*.

Surely we can do better!

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Simplified controls

Trying to list differences from the old system to the new ones would just make writing and reading this post quite an exercise in futility, so let's just pretend this is a guide to how they work, assuming the current system doesn't exist at all, alright?

Great! So, to start off, you need to get yourself a Jump Drive appropriate for you ship class, and some Jump Batteries. And you're done! You can now use the Jump Drive to it's full potential (except Beacons, we'll get to them in a bit). To jump, you simply do

Code:

/jump New York

That starts charging, and upon charge completion, you open a temporary Jump Hole leading to your destination system. Click it, press F3 and you're done!
Below you can see the showcase of the jump drive sequence.


- Jump Drive in action

Now, let's dissect the process to discuss all the differences from the current system.

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Coordinates no more

Yes, you've heard that right. Jump Drive coordinates are no longer a thing in the reworked system. Instead, you simply select a system, then you can specify one of the hand-selected, predefined coordinates for the system you chose. Or you could stick to the one that was selected by random when you started charging.

Fuel Consumption

The fuel consumption will scale with the distance traversed. The idea is quite simple: A max-range jump will be a one-way trip unless you can refuel at your destination, while not going all the way will let you jump back to your origin point (or most of the way back, anyway), this will force people to think carefully about how to plan their journey, if they decide to employ this tech.

Range

Obviously, a scaling fuel cost with distance means that the range has a limit. Various Jump Drives will have different Jump ranges, the absolute max that we will be supporting will be 5, which despite not sounding like a lot, means over half-way across the sector in any direction. On current Live version, the greatest distance between two systems is 9 jumps I believe, and to put things in perspective, New York to Omicron Gamma is just 7 jumps away.

Who/how many can use the JH

Some of you may wonder what happens to the 'Group' jumping, and the answer is similarly simple: Depending on used jump drive, a different amount of ships will be able to traverse the jump hole before it becomes too unstable to use, and becomes 'inoperable' for it's remaining duration. This also means that if you pull off a mid-combat jump, you can be followed by your enemies! Capacities for JDs Mk2-4 goes as following:

JD Mk2: 1 ship
JD Mk3: 2 ships
JD Mk4: 8 ships


All the information are handily available on the Jump Drive infocard:

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Not all systems made equal

Unfortunately, some systems are not really Jump Drive friendly, namely the system-wide asteroid field systems, such as Tau-23, Chugoku.
A similar problem manifests in systems that are only reachable by snubs due to being connected exclusively by snub/freighter-only Jump Holes, for example a reworked version of a particular Omega system.
While they may not be directly jumpable, the Asteroid Field systems will continue to count towards calculating range. Looking at current live version, it'd mean that jumping from Omega-48 to Omicron Theta would be considered a 2 range jump, going 'through' Omega-41.

Jumptrading no more

Yes, for real this time. While any* ship can take the jump hole, they can't do so while carrying cargo. There's also a few failsafes if you try to be funny and bypass the checks, I can't say I recommend doing that :]
So yeah, jumptrading is gone, and for good this time. We might relax this commodity ban slightly for the purpose of small amounts of 'RP cargo', but for the time being it's all or nothing.

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Beacons? Beacons!

As a consequence of the Jump Drive rework, beacons also known as matrixes also got touched up and heavily simplified. Having to 'sync up' charging of the jump drive, activation of the jump beacon, and activation of the jump drive is no longer a thing.

/canbeacon <id/name> - Provides you with the information whether you are capable of jumping to the specified player
/jumpbeacon <id/name> - Sends a beacon jump request to the target player
/acceptbeacon <id/name> - Accepts a beacon jump request from the specified player

Accepting the beacon request begins the charge-up sequence of the player with the Jump Drive. As the Jump Drive hits 100% charge, the beacon player's fuel is consumed, a broadcast is sent by the beacon players alerting everyone in the area about incoming jump, and within the next few seconds, the Jump Hole Exit spawns. The delay of JH spawning as well as transit time within the Jump Tunnel itself gives the players around 20-30 seconds to act appropriately as a reaction to the beacon jump, be it changing formation, attempting to flee, or moving in to surround the enemy as they jump out. Oh btw, CDing a beacon is no longer a thing :]

As or why would you bother with Beacons when you can just jump to a selected system: Beacons are capable of extending a Jump Drive's range, in the demo below for testing purposes, the Beacon was set to have a range extension of 2, which combined with range of 3 of Jump Drive itself, allowed the BC to jump 5 whole systems from Gamma to Dublin (Gamma->O41->O5->Cambridge->NL->Dublin)

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Summary of the changes

- No more player-made coordinates.
- /jump command contains all the functionalities you need to operate a jump drive.
- Instead of teleporting, you spawn a temporary Jump Hole in front of you.
- Manual charging and discharging the drive is no longer a thing, You simply open the Jump Hole as soon as you charge to full, and changing jump target drops your charge to 0.
- Jump Drives have limited range
- No more Jumptrading, not even in a Bustard

...Uh, what 'bout them Survey Modules?

Gone. Reduced to Atoms. Survey modules are obviously no longer a thing with how JD got reworked, and we spent quite some time to give Survey Modules a new purpose. Sadly, while there is a general plan as to how to make use of them in the future, I haven't had time to properly implement any of them. They'll be back, eventually.

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[Leo]

Interesting. A couple questions:

• Where do these Jumpholes come out on the system? Do you emerge from Jumpholes already present in the system?
  
• Random jumps. Are they still a thing? A part of the fun with Jumpdrives was randomly jumping around. Is this still possible?

Sounds like a big change. Looking forward to see how survey modules work in the future.

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
Roleplay is dead. Long live Powertraders and PvP I guess.

[Aingar]

Interesting. A couple questions:

• Where do these Jumpholes come out on the system? Do you emerge from Jumpholes already present in the system?
  
• Random jumps. Are they still a thing? A part of the fun with Jumpdrives was randomly jumping around. Is this still possible?

Sounds like a big change. Looking forward to see how survey modules work in the future.

As you could see in the showcase video, all systems have pre-defined destination points you can choose from (with the initial one being picked at random). Of course that doesn't apply to Beacons that spawn near the beacon holder.

As for the random jumps, they're not a part of this current iteration but they might be added later on. Do note that they'd still consume the appropriate amount of fuel so you might inadvertently end up taking a one-way trip, hence why they were cut for the time being.

[Couden]

Rip jumpdrive.

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[Serpentis]

Love this change, makes me want to actually use a Jumpdrive, nicely done!

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Abadan and the Arcadia | Sergei, The lost | Feedback Thread

[Lolipop12]

Nice improvement. It looks more... fascinating than what it currently is.

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Rhodeia --- Unit-9467F --- K'Halaesh

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[Toaster]

Does normal jumping also spawn a hyperspace breach at the destination or is that exclusive to beacon jumping?

This looks really cool, though I feel some of the sound and visual effects aren't the most fitting. Since these are basically artificially created jump holes, shouldn't the "hyperspace tunnel" look the same as (or more similar to) that of a normal jump hole or jump gate?

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Olivia Sable

[Sombs]

Oh no, people no longer will be able to use the totally-not-leaked 100% accuracy Vagrant jump drive coords that the admins told the Vagrants not to allow anyone else to use.

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[TheSauron]

rip Lisbon

Are there going to be any changes to which ships can use the jumpdrives, or is everyone without battlecruisers still out of luck?

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One MD Admiral

[Haste]

Cruisers can run JD2s. JD2s are nice spicy 1-ship jumphole generators with a 15 second chargeup time.

Maybe there'll also be some different JDs available to be built, who knows?

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