Walt I guess it depends on how short range it is. I was thinking Electro-Bolter range, but I get the impression you're thinking even shorter than that?
Also, remember tractor beams are probably coming soon-ish.
Yeah, I was thinking more like 75 or even 50 range. The lower the range is the more useful and needed the shell becomes, and the more spread the gun can have without being absurd at max range.
Walt Certainly an interesting idea. I think it'd have to be a pretty short amount of time though, especially if you have to wait for the FTL drives to charge up before blinking, otherwise it'd be faster just to move there.
I think it would depend on the situation and how much FTL efficiency you have. A sub-light passenger shuttle with just one FTL drive could probably fly faster than blink, but an expensive, FTL-rich warship with enemies blocking would probably be better off blinking.
I also think it would depend on how far away you're blinking. Right now I'm thinking that range should not (or barely) affect charge and "ghost" time, so very long distance blinks would definitely be faster than flying. But IMO the chief advantage to blinking would be the ability to go through enemies instead of around them, not getting from one side of the map to the other.
Walt This makes sense for a short-range blink, but I'm not sure makes sense for long-range FTL jumps, where I really like how it works right now. (I just like the aesthetics of having to spin up the FTL drive, and it also has the potential of creating tense moments where you're racing to spin up FTL before jumping out of a dangerous situation.)
Maybe FTL drives stay like they are now, but their battery capacity is influenced by FTL efficiency? So a 100% efficiency ship would only need a couple of batteries to FTL/blink (quick charging), but a 20% efficiency ship would need a whole bunch of batteries and would take longer to fill (maybe getting caught by space pirates).
Walt My current thinking is that your ship keeps its orientation (and probably velocity too, now that I think about it). That could create some interesting challenges/strategies where you need to think about how you design your ship because after you blink it'll have a different side exposed to the enemy.
Sounds like an excellent idea.
Walt I think this depends on whether the drive only charges up once a blink order is given. If it only charges once the blink order is given, then I think it should blink instantly when fully charged. If it charges constantly (acting as more of a cooldown timer) then of course it should wait for the player to initiate the blink.
Right now I'm thinking that you would set a blink target before the drives start charging (just like FTL), so I agree that it would make sense to blink instantly once fully charged.
But it could also work if you could manually start blink charging without setting a destination, and only decide where to blink once the drives are charged. Holding a full blink charge for too long might cause some kind of trouble though.
Walt Hmm, either of these could be problematic. If it's grid-relative, that might make blink very difficult to use in combat. If it's enemy-relative, that might be kind of strange to see a "wormhole exit" moving with the enemy, and it definitely complicates the U.I. for initiating a blink.
Just self-relative then? That's simple to use and easy to understand, while still allowing interesting tactical choices.
Walt Right now, FTL efficiency impacts fuel usage when making FTL jumps. Are you proposing getting rid of that? Because that'd be a major change. I realize FTL fuel isn't a very major mechanic right now in singleplayer, but eventually it probably will be (once you have to collect and store it on your ship).
Not at all, I just mean that charge time/ghost time would affect both long-range FTL and local blink jumps. A ship with lots of extra FTL drives would definitely be able to FTL cheaper/better than other ships, but not so much so that it would be cost-effective if you didn't need the blink capability (except in special cases).
So for example, let's say right now my 1mil ship is at 20% FTL efficiency and it costs 100k to get up to 50% FTL efficiency, but it costs 300k to get it up to 95% efficiency. At 20% efficiency I use 25 fuel for a particular jump, and blink is so slow it's nearly useless. At 50% efficiency I use 10 fuel for the same FTL jump, and blink is faster but still slow. At 95% efficiency I only use 5 fuel for the same FTL jump, and can blink effectively. So if I plan to FTL jump more than once or twice I definitely want to spend the extra 100k to get 50% efficiency, which would slash fuel costs immensely. But if I'm just hauling freight or similar it wouldn't make sense to spend the extra 200k on FTL just to save 5 fuel - I would only do that if I need the blink capability.
OR, maybe the future open world has lots of high-efficiency FTL stargates, so ships all use public transit and save lots of money on fuel. So you'd only need high-efficiency FTL if you're frequently jumping "off-grid" or if you're planning to blink a lot.
Walt Now that I think of it, here's another argument in favor of keeping blink and FTL separate: In the future, FTL won't use power, it'll use fuel or crystals or some resource that you need to collect and store on your ship. But blink will probably still just use power.
Why not have blinks be free (power only) but have long-range FTL use fuel/crystals also? The distances involved in a blink would be so much smaller than the distances in FTL that they're effectively 0 by comparison, and would use effectively 0 fuel. And balance-wise I don't think that FTL fuel should be a limiting factor in multiplayer.
Walt One of the more, er, extreme ideas I've had is that ships will literally take damage when blinking with anything less than 100% efficiency. Or even any parts outside the radius of a blink drive just get ripped off and left behind. 😛
On one hand, I really like the idea that blinking with a couple of your drives destroyed could rip off half of your ship (or maybe blinking before they're at full power). But on the other hand, why would you take damage when blinking but not FTL? And in general I'm leery of adding ways to damage yourself - both because I could see a new player accidentally blink-destructing their stuff, and also because I don't think players should feel like they need to conserve their blinks (but that's just my opinion).
But the more I think of it the more I like this idea, and I'll think some more on how this might work. I can so clearly imagine a desperate captain FTL-ing away before his drives are ready and ripping his ship into pieces.
Walt Yeah, they could also maybe buff blink drives, extending their range. (Would probably work best if blink efficiency isn't a factor of blink range, which it probably should be.)
Personally, I think that sensors should be purely an information-gathering device, doing things like radar, detecting jump signatures/cloaked ships, and increasing visual area (instead of directly boosting range or accuracy). But that's just my personal opinion on what "feels right."
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So putting some ideas together, here's roughly what I'm imagining blink to look like (hopefully more clearly than in my last post):
If I want to blink, I start by clicking a FTL command card button, then setting the target on the game screen for blink. Once I set a target, crew start to fill the drives with power - how much power depends on my FTL efficiency and ship mass per FTL drive, and maybe the target distance. I can keep flying around and shooting like normal, and the blink target maintains position relative to me. Once all the drives are fully charged, my ship dissapears (into "FTL-limbo") and a FTL blur appears at the target location. The FTL blur (like when FTL-ing in bounty) is visible to all players if they have sharp enough eyes to spot it, but ships with sensors will highlight the blur and show exactly where, when, and in what orientation my ship will exit FTL.
How long I spend in FTL-limbo depends on my FTL efficiency, target distance, and possibly ship mass. While in FTL-limbo no time passes on my ship - crew don't move, factories don't produce, weapons don't fill. Just before I exit FTL, a big shockwave pushes all ships away from my exit point, to reduce the probability of accidental FTL-ramming. When I exit, I have the same orientation and velocity as I did before entering FTL. My shields/weapons/engines may or may not be drained of power.
If instead I want to long-range FTL, it works basically the same way. The only difference is that the jump also costs fuel/crystals, with the cost influenced by FTL efficiency.
