Proposed Short-Range FTL ("blink"/"hop") Mechanics

Dibs

Walt perhaps a lower cost add-on module for FTL pieces. Only the FTL's with the add-ons can contribute to the hop/jump?

As for jumping past people for hitting their rear, maintained momentum should help with that being a tactical kick in the balls. Hopefully you either ram into each other backwards for a loving embrace of awkwardness or jump passed and pull the finger and keep moving

Walt

Dibs perhaps a lower cost add-on module for FTL pieces. Only the FTL's with the add-ons can contribute to the hop/jump?

What is the advantage of it being an add-on instead of a wholly separate part?

Walt

Dalas120 Aside from kiting, I also think that instant blink lacks counterplay. Even if you know that I'm going to blink behind you, there's very little you can do about it. If you turn around, I just won't blink. If you move, I'll blink to a different spot. It would just come down to having a ship designed to tank my shots while you turn around - again and again until one of us dies.

Here's an idea: What if the possible blink destinations were very limited, such as a straight line in front of the ship, making it more predictable where someone might be about to blink to. (Seeing someone turn to face a direction could be a clue that they're about to blink.)

This would probably necessitate blink drives being a separate part from FTL drives that are directionally-oriented. (Or it would mean changing the FTL Drive to be directionally oriented, though it needs to remain 2x2 for backwards-compatibility reasons.) Having multiple blink drives facing in multiple directions would give you more options for where you can blink, but obviously cost a lot more without increasing the distance you can blink.

Edit: If blink drives are their own, directionally-oriented part, there's no reason they couldn't also be external parts like thrusters. If it has a long-enough prohibited zone, that would discourage their use on kiters. (Though at this point they start behaving a lot like boost thrusters.)

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Walt Here's an idea: What if the possible blink destinations were very limited, such as a straight line in front of the ship, making it more predictable where someone might be about to blink to. (Seeing someone turn to face a direction could be a clue that they're about to blink.)

This is an interesting idea, but I think it would be sad to lose out on the maintaining orientation after a blink thing; having to turn your ship to the facing you want to be at after the blink. And like you said, this would just be like a faster boost thruster. I feel it doesn't make the part unique enough.

Edit: Another complaint against fixed-direction blinking: it would phase out the choosing blink range thing; be careful not to blink too far or be penalized. I like the range penalties, they make blinking require skill and ship familiarity. If you're just blinking in a line, there's not much opportunity to choose range outside of a slider preset.

Dalas120

Walt Here's an idea: What if the possible blink destinations were very limited, such as a straight line in front of the ship, making it more predictable where someone might be about to blink to. (Seeing someone turn to face a direction could be a clue that they're about to blink.)

That's a very interesting idea! I'm not sure how much it would actually help with counterplay (you can know they're going to blink, but there's still not much you can do about it), but I do think it makes a lot of sense for "realism". After all, I couldn't imagine the enterprise warping sideways, or a star destroyer hyperspeeding straight up. Though I agree it's risky that blink/ftl might feel too much like thrusters; lateral blinking (and holding orientation) "feels" like something you should be able to do.

Walt A non-instant blink time also means that either you can't issue any other orders while your ship is preparing to blink, or if you can, the user interface for doing so gets a lot more complicated (now you can have multiple orders being executed at once, which is an entirely new concept)

Oh, I think I explained my concept badly. I didn't intend blink to be a ship command (not like movement, attack, strafe, etc.) but instead it would be a part command like focus-firing weapons or toggling a boost thruster. So you could continue to issue movement orders (or any other type of order) completely normally without affecting the command given to the blink drives. After the blink completes, existing move/attack orders would probably be unchanged.

Walt Because ships are constantly moving, where you click is almost certainly not where you want your ship to end up once it's actually ready to blink. That means you need to be able to set a destination relative to either the enemy or yourself, which complicates things.

I was thinking you'd just click on a point to aim the blink drives - x degrees angle, y meters distance - and the point would stay self-relative. I don't think you'd need a special UI if self-relative was the ONLY way to blink. A special UI would only be if you could choose between grid-relative, self-relative, and/or enemy-relative (which I don't think is a good idea).

Walt Having charge time be uncancelable seems weird to me. I get why you want it from a balance standpoint, but why can't crew stop delivering power, that makes no sense.

That is a really good point.

And what happens if crew are cut off from one FTL drive? Or what if you toggle off an FTL drive? And why can't you keep batteries in the FTL drive before turning it on like with every other part, instead of leaving it empty and needing to rush to fill it?

Let me think about all these some more, since it's probably important to figure out for both instant and cast-time FTL.

Walt Can you elaborate on how this would work? The exit point is always relative to your own ship? Does it rotate around your ship as your ship rotates, or is it just relative to your ships centerpoint?

Yeah, I was thinking you would always exit relative to your own ship. So the blink would be more of an offset, instead of moving to a particular grid-relative location. The exit point would move orthoganally with your own ship, so if you move up it moves up, if you move down it moves down. Turning would have no effect on the exit point, other than to change the orientation you would be in when you exit.

nop

Walt My hope with instant-blink is that it will encourage players to build more multi-sided ships.

Dalas120 More multi-sided ships sounds good to me, but I'm not sure that would happen.

Me neither, if back-blinking is so good that people need to shield the rear of their ship or bring a broadsider to fight it, it's probably too good. On the other hand, all FTL-capable ships having access to short range or emergency blink is cool as a limited defense against ramming/sumo.

Dalas120 Aside from kiting, I also think that instant blink lacks counterplay. Even if you know that I'm going to blink behind you, there's very little you can do about it. If you turn around, I just won't blink. If you move, I'll blink to a different spot. It would just come down to having a ship designed to tank my shots while you turn around - again and again until one of us dies.

I don't think this is true. The counterplay to prevent back-blinking is to move away from the blinking ship. If it's feasible to blink behind another ship from outside weapons range, it needs to be at such expense that you can only fit a few laser blasters.

The mechanic of getting extra blink distance at expense of damage may be too valuable a trade. It's already worthwhile to take some ring damage leading an opponent into a bad situation, because being in the right position is more important than maintaining ship integrity.

Walt Here's an idea: What if the possible blink destinations were very limited, such as a straight line in front of the ship, making it more predictable where someone might be about to blink to. (Seeing someone turn to face a direction could be a clue that they're about to blink.)

This would be a big nerf bat. If it's going to be expensive, it needs to be flexible. The range doesn't need to be that long for it to be used defensively.

Dibs

Piggy backing off the current FTL means you already have the distribution required for scaling ship sizes. Cost will follow suit, more add ons for more FTL's to shift bigger ships. Maybe I'm thinking in a weird direction?

Lafiel

Dibs Piggy backing should not be possible because there's already the troublesome issue for the jumping ship to jump in the first place so why would another ship get it for free?

Dibs

Lafiel woops was meant to tag Walt in that. Reference was to using a single module vs multiple, I suggested an add-on to FTL devices.

Using mobile in the rain is doing me no solids.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Dalas120 I really like the idea of making tractor beams affect blinking/FTL! It'll add another dimension to both tractor beams and blink drives. Though I would still like blink counterplay that doesn't require a specific part.

I agree that tractor beams shouldn't be the only counter to blink drive. I have some ideas about countering.

Add telltale particle effects and sounds to blink usage.
Stage 1: When blinker begins charging FTLs, of course it will show them spinning up, but there should also be a color change denoting a blink rather than a jump.
Stage 2: When the blinker clicks blink to activate his targeting options, add a visual effect and sound effects that indicate an impending blink, such as a distortion/shimmer around their ship and a high-frequency stutter to the FTL spin sound, making it sound sort of dirty or unstable. This stage should be cancelable at the cost of losing all FTL power.
Stage 3: When the blinker selects a destination, the destination should be indicated by a particle effect, maybe another distortion/shimmer in that area of space. This would allow an observant opponent to preemptively rotate to face the destination or to preemptively force-fire on that area. This stage can't be canceled. Obviously countering the blink in this way would require an execution delay. This stage might last 3-5 seconds to give the opponent time to begin their counterplay, but not so much time that it's easy to reposition before execution. Edit: After reading what Walt has said about the problems a delayed execution, I think this stage wouldn't work.

Walt
That's probably too big to be usable on really tiny ships, and I see no reason really tiny ships shouldn't be able to blink.

Yes, but if the part is too small, such as 2x2, every ship will toss one in to have blink capability.

Walt I can see blink drives being very small (2x2 like the FTL drive) but also very expensive (say 25K), which means they can be used on small ships but add significantly to the cost.

Ah, I forgot about cost balancing. Yeah, part cost could prohibit it's use in smaller ships, but that cost wouldn't be as much of an issue for larger ships. So I forsee too many large ships having blink capability. Then again, it would probably be harder to make large ships FTL efficient enough to be good blinkers, so maybe that would limit blink prolificacy.

Canoneer

Walt What about a 'stabiliser' part thet prevents flt jump damage in a short range?

Walt

Dalas120 Can you elaborate? I actually thought that charge time would be simpler for the player to use - just click the blink button and click a spot on the map, instead of needing to charge the drives with one button, then blink with another, and have a third to de-charge the drives (and UI to show charge progress).

Because ships are constantly moving, where you click is almost certainly not where you want your ship to end up once it's actually ready to blink. That means you need to be able to set a destination relative to either the enemy or yourself, which complicates things.

A non-instant blink time also means that either you can't issue any other orders while your ship is preparing to blink, or if you can, the user interface for doing so gets a lot more complicated (now you can have multiple orders being executed at once, which is an entirely new concept). Regardless, a non-instant blink means the ship needs to keep doing it's current order until it's ready to blink. An instant blink can either completely replace current orders or get cleanly slotted in before them in the queue so that orders get resumed after blinking.

Dalas120 uncancelable charge time

Having charge time be uncancelable seems weird to me. I get why you want it from a balance standpoint, but why can't crew stop delivering power, that makes no sense.

Dalas120 But then you can move your ship (which also moves your blink exit point)

Can you elaborate on how this would work? The exit point is always relative to your own ship? Does it rotate around your ship as your ship rotates, or is it just relative to your ships centerpoint?

Walt

Tobi-wan_Kenobi This is an interesting idea, but I think it would be sad to lose out on the maintaining orientation after a blink thing; having to turn your ship to the facing you want to be at after the blink.

The ship would still keep whatever orientation it had at the time of blink.

Dalas120 Oh, I think I explained my concept badly. I didn't intend blink to be a ship command (not like movement, attack, strafe, etc.) but instead it would be a part command like focus-firing weapons or toggling a boost thruster. So you could continue to issue movement orders (or any other type of order) completely normally without affecting the command given to the blink drives.

It probably wouldn't be a part command per se, given that a blink is a whole-ship command, but yeah, it'd probably need to be separate from the regular command queue. Now that I've had a good night to sleep on it, I'm less concerned about overcomplicating the UI. It'd take a bit of work to implement, but it's pretty doable.

Dalas120 I was thinking you'd just click on a point to aim the blink drives - x degrees angle, y meters distance - and the point would stay self-relative. I don't think you'd need a special UI if self-relative was the ONLY way to blink. A special UI would only be if you could choose between grid-relative, self-relative, and/or enemy-relative (which I don't think is a good idea).

Yeah this makes sense.

Why don't you think enemy-relative is a good idea? Just because it has a low usefulness-to-complexity ratio (which I would agree with), or some other reason?

Dalas120 And why can't you keep batteries in the FTL drive before turning it on like with every other part, instead of leaving it empty and needing to rush to fill it?

I'm not too concerned about this, given this is how the FTL drive already works, which honestly doesn't seem to weird to me and I don't recall anyone ever complaining about it.

Dalas120 Turning would have no effect on the exit point, other than to change the orientation you would be in when you exit.

Hmm, unsure about this. Is it a good idea to allow a ship to turn before making the jump, or should you have to turn afterwards? (Though if the exit point was rotation-relative, then I suppose a pro strat would then be to place the exit point in a location such that after your ship turns it's in the desired location, which doesn't sound like a fun or interesting strategy that I want to encourage. So yeah, probably rotation-non-relative is the way to go.)

nop if back-blinking is so good that people need to shield the rear of their ship or bring a broadsider to fight it, it's probably too good

I'm not sure I buy the fundamental premise that having to protect your other sides is a bad thing.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi You mentioned earlier that if a short blink might not dissipate all blink drive charge, there might be a base energy cost for blinking regardless of chosen blink range. If so, I feel this base cost should be taken when the player selects the blink option, so that cancelling a blink targeting will have a cost. Much like boosters - don't click activate boost until you're ready to boost, because deactivating dumps all the power.

Well if we're talking about an instant blink in my original proposal, then there's nothing to cancel. If we're talking about having to charge-up the drives after setting the destination as in Dalas's proposal, then I think canceling the blink would instantly drain all power from all FTL drives.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi I think delivering power to one location is much more manageable and reasonable than the crew having to perform a ship-wide rush to bring power to a bunch of parts at once.

I don't think I agree with this. Well, I agree that having a single part that needs to be powered-up is more manageable for the player, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. Part of the challenge of having a large ship capable of blinking is that you have to power all of its FTL/blink drives.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Delivering power to a discrete blink drive part instead of to FTLs also makes more sense, since I believe you have said that in the future crew will be carrying jump fuel canisters to FTLs, not power. (Am I understanding that right?)

Your understanding is correct.

I do agree that this is a point in favor of them being separate parts, though I don't think it's a huge point in favor. I don't think it's too terribly weird for the FTL Drive to have two different modes depending on whether it's doing a long-range jump or a tactical jump, and it can have different graphics depending on which mode it's in.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Side-question: will having higher than 100% FTL efficiency still decrease jump fuel costs, or will the fuel discounts end at 100%?

My current thinking is that FTL efficiency higher than 100% will not further decrease long-range jump fuel costs. (Assuming they use the same part. If they're different parts, then this whole question is moot.)

Tobi-wan_Kenobi The fires would spawn in the FTL rooms.

This is an interesting thought. It could also be that fires have a higher chance of spawning closer to FTL rooms than farther away.

Mc2 Well, we have special part for blink, its FTL drive, which has no other use, cost fortune, use lot of crew and energy and can be well balanced.

Remember that in singleplayer, almost every ship will have an FTL drive. This is currently true of player ships, and in the future will probably also be true of enemy and NPC ships. Not wanting every ship in singleplayer to have blink capability is I think a point for making them separate parts.

As an aside, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if certain parts, like the FTL Drive, just aren't useful in multiplayer.

FangTheCat Assuming you would "hop" through a ship.. Since cosmoteer is 2D Would t FTL "Hopping" through a ship cause.. you know.. Utter destruction? Moving Light speed Into and Through an object would.. hurt.. A LOT (on mbile rn.. reading And typing is hard)

It's an inter-dimensional jump that folds spacetime over on itself to create a temporary wormhole... or something like that. 😉

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Dalas120 And what happens if crew are cut off from one FTL drive? Or what if you toggle off an FTL drive?

This seems like a point in favor of not having to deliver power to the FTLs and instead having a separate blink drive part that needs the power. FTLs could still modify blink efficiency, but the blink part itself is what does the blinking.

Dalas120 And why can't you keep batteries in the FTL drive before turning it on like with every other part, instead of leaving it empty and needing to rush to fill it?

A good point. I think having blink function similar to other parts would be good, just to keep it intuitive. The crew automatically delivers power to a laser to keep it ready to fire. I think blink should operate in the same way.

@Walt

You mentioned earlier that if a short blink might not dissipate all blink drive charge, there might be a base energy cost for blinking regardless of chosen blink range. If so, I feel this base cost should be taken when the player selects the blink option, so that cancelling a blink targeting will have a cost. Much like boosters - don't click activate boost until you're ready to boost, because deactivating dumps all the power.

Also, I'm currently leaning more in favor of delivering power to a discrete blink drive part rather than to the FTL drives. FTL parts could still affect blink efficiency, but I think delivering power to one location is much more manageable and reasonable than the crew having to perform a ship-wide rush to bring power to a bunch of parts at once. If you need blink power requirements to vary, the discrete blink drive part could look and function similar to an FTL part, in that when you deliver power to an FTL part, it doesn't slot a battery in, it adds completion to a circle around the part. In this way, you might have to deliver 100 batteries to the blink drive of a large ship, but instead of having to visually account for 100 batteries, each battery would just increase the completion of the circle like a loading bar.

Delivering power to a discrete blink drive part instead of to FTLs also makes more sense, since I believe you have said that in the future crew will be carrying jump fuel canisters to FTLs, not power. (Am I understanding that right?)

Side-question: will having higher than 100% FTL efficiency still decrease jump fuel costs, or will the fuel discounts end at 100%?

Another thing to consider for balance - after blinking, the ship could be drifting dumb for about 1 second, unresponsive to commands, weapons disabled, etc. Much like when your control room becomes unpowered. This would give opponents time to begin to react.

nop The mechanic of getting extra blink distance at expense of damage may be too valuable a trade. It's already worthwhile to take some ring damage leading an opponent into a bad situation, because being in the right position is more important than maintaining ship integrity.

Maybe instead of parts taking direct damage, it could be only that fires appear? The fires would spawn in the FTL rooms. In this way, you might take very little actual damage if your fire-suppression layout is good, but you will still take some damage, and the first parts to break would be the FTL rooms. I like this because it would further emphasize fire-suppression in player's designs.

Or wait, you're saying it would be too desirable to take damage from a far blink, and that players would ignore the damage. I don't know enough about multiplayer to corroborate or refute this, but in single player, the attrition cost would likely be sufficient discouragement. You're trying to save money, you can't be having to repair expensive parts after every battle. Also, even in multiplayer, if the blink drives/FTL are the parts taking the most damage, overextending your blinks could lead to those parts being destroyed and you losing blink functionality before the fight ends.

Dalas120

Walt Why don't you think enemy-relative is a good idea? Just because it has a low usefulness-to-complexity ratio (which I would agree with), or some other reason?

Mostly because it would make it impossible for an enemy to dodge away from the blink, since it would be "locked on." It gets rid of part of the reason for having a charge time, which is to anticipate, and either avoid or take advantage of an enemy's ill-timed blink.

Also for "realism's" sake. It would seem strange if the blink drives could change their target based on an enemy ship's movement, but you couldn't manually retarget them. If the target is self-relative then it never gets automatically changed (relative to the blink drives).

Walt Hmm, unsure about this. Is it a good idea to allow a ship to turn before making the jump, or should you have to turn afterwards? (Though if the exit point was rotation-relative, then I suppose a pro strat would then be to place the exit point in a location such that after your ship turns it's in the desired location, which doesn't sound like a fun or interesting strategy that I want to encourage. So yeah, probably rotation-non-relative is the way to go.)

I think it's probably ok - if I target blink behind you and turn before the blink completes, then I'm exposing my back to your guns (and giving a pretty obvious cue).

A third option would be locking exit orientation when the blink order is first given? That might feel strange to use though.

Things I'm still thinking about: why can't you stop charging FTL, what happens if you turn off an FTL drive/an FTL drive is inaccessible? How will FTL with physical fuel work?

Random thought about sensors: I know you've said that directional sensors would cost a lot of CPU, but what about targeted "scrying" sensors? So you would target your sensor array on a particular point in the fog of war (probably choosing between grid-relative, self-relative, or ally/enemy-relative) and the sensor would reveal an area around that point. Each sensor could be targeted independently. Area revealed would shrink with distance from the ship/sensor.

nop I don't think this is true. The counterplay to prevent back-blinking is to move away from the blinking ship. If it's feasible to blink behind another ship from outside weapons range, it needs to be at such expense that you can only fit a few laser blasters.

That's a good point. From the sound of it instant blink would be very short-ranged. And since most ~1mil ships are 50+ tiles thick in the first place, you could easily stay in weapons range while making it impossible for your enemy to get an effective blink flank (at least until you hit the RoD, but then back-blinking would probably hurt more than it would help). Though I still think that cast time would provide more interesting counterplay.

nop The mechanic of getting extra blink distance at expense of damage may be too valuable a trade. It's already worthwhile to take some ring damage leading an opponent into a bad situation, because being in the right position is more important than maintaining ship integrity.

I'm not sure about this. From the sound of it, blink damage would be concentrated in areas with low ftl efficiency. That's very different from the RoD's steady, even damage - blink damage would probably destroy parts/sections pretty rapidly. Though it depends on what the damage stats end up being.

Mc2

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

but the blink part itself is what does the blinking.

But what part make FTL long range jumps?

I can by car 1000 miles, but I´m not allowed go by car just 1 mile and I have to use different device?

Mc2

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Also, I think there should be a separate part that must be added to a ship to enable blink capability. I don't think we want every ship to have blink capability, even if most won't be able to do it efficiently. It should be an awkward size, like 3x3 or 2x5.

Well, we have special part for blink, its FTL drive, which has no other use, cost fortune, use lot of crew and energy and can be well balanced.
In case you will visit any MP game, having FTL on ship clearly show that you are noob enormously wasting budget.
Using FTL drive for blink will make designing more interesting, but not to much more complicated like using new special part.

Mc2

Walt

My hope with instant-blink is that it will encourage players to build more multi-sided ships.

Yes, that I hope too. No more wall dominance ( just for diagonal users no matter which shape they already have, all ship made to fire one side is wall).

Mc2

Walt

FWIW, I'm not sold on the same part doing both blink and FTL either. I can see blink drives being very small (2x2 like the FTL drive) but also very expensive (say 25K), which means they can be used on small ships but add significantly to the cost.

Well, I think that even small ship below 100K can have blink, but I easy see that before you load your tiny ship to perform blink with resources you have, your ship will be killed by enemy, because your crew fill FTL and do not do standard jobs like firing, delivering ammo/energy .

So blink for tiny ships yes, but player will quickly realize that cost for blink compared to total cost of ship is to high.

Idea of having cool down for FTL could ad more cost for small ships, because it could be easy set that 1 FTL have to cool down (time 1) and perform needed "calculations" to jump (time2) for next blink could take long time, while more FTLs will have same time 1 but calculation time will be reduced due to using more "calculators" to prepare jump.

Oneye

Walt So far I'm really liking this idea, although FTL drives will probably have to be less expensive for it to be worth having them on MP ships. Since they cost the same as a control room right now, you would really only want them on specialized flanker/ dodger ships that spend almost all of their money on FTL drives and hopping related parts. If the FTL drive was less expensive or general efficiency was increased you could add FTL drives to your older ships and use it as a get-away/dodging tool.

Rougechicken

I like the idea but I think it may make multiplayer a bit unfair becoming who can make the most ftl hops

Mc2

Rougechicken what is difference on being unfair by having more lasers, or more thrusters in comparison to having more ftl? every solution is not for free and every has ist advantages and disadvantages, wwhat matters is only balancing for every design to be viable in some way and really weak in other.

FangTheCat

Walt (Ik its a game but still).
Assuming you would "hop" through a ship.. Since cosmoteer is 2D Would t FTL "Hopping" through a ship cause.. you know.. Utter destruction? Moving Light speed Into and Through an object would.. hurt.. A LOT (on mbile rn.. reading And typing is hard)

Rougechicken

FangTheCat yea also keep in mind if you warped through a ship it would cause mass destruction due to any thing moving at light speed has infinite mass