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

Walt

On the trello, I am planning to add a Blink Drive that will enable ships to make short-range FTL jumps, such as from one side of an enemy to another, or to quickly get away from or closer to the enemy.

Here is my current idea for how these blink drives will work, which I welcome your feedback on:

First of all, blink drives won't actually be separate from FTL drives. The regular FTL drives will enable both short-range and long-range jumps.

When making a long-range FTL jump (using the galaxy map), it will work basically like it works right now: Crew will bring power to the FTL drives, and when they're all powered up, you click the jump button and off you go. The one major change is that the amount of power it takes to charge the FTL drive will now depend on the mass of the ship, the FTL efficiency, and the number of FTL drives, meaning a larger ship with fewer FTL drives will take longer to charge up. The equation for per-drive power usage will look something like this: PowerPerDrive = ShipMass / FtlEfficiency / NumberOfFtlDrives (Note: Eventually I plan to replace power with fuel for long-range jumps, and the amount of fuel used per drive will be essentially the same formula.)

Making a short-range (same area) FTL jump ("hop"?) is different: First, before you can make a hop, you need to power-up the FTL drives (which you can do by selecting them and pressing a toggle button), which will use the same equation as above, meaning larger ships with fewer FTL drives will take longer to power up. Once powered up, the drives are in a "ready" state, meaning they can make an FTL hop at any time. In their "ready" state, they are also continuously draining power at a pretty hungry rate (the exact amount depending on a similar equation), meaning there's a significant cost to keep your drives "at the ready" to make an FTL hop.

When your drives are "ready", an "FTL Hop" button becomes available. Clicking it (or probably pressing J) and then clicking on a destination will cause your ship to immediately teleport to the destination. This is very fast, just a quick jump-out animation followed by a jump-in animation. Note that your ship's orientation cannot be changed by hopping, meaning you'll need to consider the fact that you may now have a different side of your ship facing the enemy after the hop. (Your FTL drives also lose all power and will need to be recharged before hopping again.)

But you can't just hop anywhere: The distance you can hop depends on your FTL efficiency, with greater efficiencies meaning you can hop farther. But it's not a simple hard limit on how far you can jump. It's actually that you don't want to jump too far, because if you do bad things start happening. For example, let's say that your ship has 100% FTL efficiency...

At 50 meters, your ship starts losing a percentage of its power, up to 150 meters at which all power will be lost.
At 100 meters, your ship starts taking damage, up to 200 meters at which your ship would be destroyed. (Which the game won't let you do, so yes, there is an eventual hard limit.)
At 150 meters, there is a per-tile chance of fires breaking out all over your ship which increases up to maybe 25% at 200 meters.

(Don't be too concerned with the actual distances here, they're just examples chosen for the sake of clarity and will be balanced as needed.)

In order to balance short-range FTL hops so that they're not too cheap, there's one additional change that needs to be made: FTL efficiency can go above 100%. While an FTL efficiency above 100% won't save you any more fuel, it will increase your hop range accordingly. An FTL efficiency of "only" 100% will actually mean that your ship isn't very good at short-range hops and should probably only be used in emergencies. A higher efficiency of 200-300% is probably around what you'd need for FTL hops to be effective in combat.

(Aside #1: FTL drive efficiency will probably be rebalanced such that a single drive on a small Model-L sized ship will give around 200% efficiency but will quickly drop as the ship gets bigger.)

(Aside #2: Although behind-the-scenes FTL drive efficiency will be calculated as a single number, it will probably be displayed on the user interface as two separate numbers: FTL Fuel Efficiency, which maxes out at 100%; and FTL Hop Range, which is an actual distance in meters, probably the maximum distance you can hop without taking any damage.)

(Aside #3: I've yet to figure out how exactly FTL efficiencies above 100% will be displayed on the colored overlay in build mode. Right now it goes red->yellow->green as efficiency increases, with green being 100%. Perhaps something like red->yellow->green->cyan, where green is still 100% and cyan is whatever the maximum possible efficiency is.)

(Aside #4: After clicking on the FTL Hop button, the game will display near the mouse cursor the percentage of power loss and damage taken that would occur if you made a hop to that location.)

Please post your thoughts, criticisms, and alternative ideas! Thanks!

jbox1

Walt How about the whole “low efficiencies cause damage on long range jumps” thing?

Also, should long range jumps take longer to charge than short range jumps?

Canoneer

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

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.

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)

FangTheCat

EDIT2 No im not deleting this! IM BRINGING Attention to the broken ness!!

EDIT OK LOOK Above this! THE SAAme thingy?!? FORUM IS BROKEN.

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)

Sombreroman

Walt Two Words: HECK YES.

Elethio

I think that blink drives are a great idea. Love the fact that you're still adding exciting new mechanics.

Walt But you can't just hop anywhere: The distance you can hop depends on your FTL efficiency, with greater efficiencies meaning you can hop farther.

Personally, I'd do the opposite to this, and make short jumps harder than longer jumps. This is for two reasons:

Firstly - From a lore PoV jump drives are powerful devices designed to carry ships to different star systems, so using them for short hops should be difficult (and dangerous) to do. Think of it like using a solid rocket booster to get to the corner shops. Yes, it will be fast, but that's not the problem.

Secondly - Short jumps are tactically more important than longer jumps IMO. Short jumps would be used for getting into/out of combat quickly, for delivering and avoiding alpha strikes, for protecting damaged areas on your ship, and for bringing different weapons arcs into range quickly. Longer jumps are useful for kiting and getting out of no-win situations temporarily.

How could blink drives work if shorter jumps are harder to do?
I'd begin by setting the standard jump at something like 800m, basically, a nice long distance that will get you away from combat but not out of arena completely. This sort of distance is ok for getting into or out of combat fast, but of no use for manoeuvring when in combat. From a lore PoV, this standard jump range is justified by arguing that the jump computers have a hardwired program, that cannot be altered or reprogrammed without a massive loss in efficiency.
Adding extra drives and increasing jump efficiency would increase and decrease the possible range of the jump (Hard limit?) so something like:

150% efficiency would be +/- 400m range (Min jump 400m, Max jump 1200m)
200% efficiency would be +/- 600m range (Min jump 200m, Max jump 1400m)
250% efficiency would be +/- 700m range (Min jump 100m, Max jump 1500m)
300% efficiency would be +/- 750m range (Min jump 50m, Max jump 1550m)
350% efficiency would be +/- 775m range (Min jump 25m, Max jump 1575m)
400% efficiency would be +/- 788m range (Min jump 13m, Max jump 1587m)

I'm not sure if the jump efficiency can go this high or if ranges given are appropriate. But, scaling values with jump efficiency are the goal, and with this system Jump ranges of 0 or 2xstandard range are the outside limits that will never be reached even with infinite jump efficiency.

More values with the same system to give a better idea of whats happening

113% efficiency would be +/- 100m range (Min jump 700m, Max jump 900m)
125% efficiency would be +/- 200m range (Min jump 600m, Max jump 1000m)
138% efficiency would be +/- 200m range (Min jump 500m, Max jump 1100m)
150% efficiency would be +/- 400m range (Min jump 400m, Max jump 1200m)
175% efficiency would be +/- 500m range (Min jump 300m, Max jump 1300m)
200% efficiency would be +/- 600m range (Min jump 200m, Max jump 1400m)
250% efficiency would be +/- 700m range (Min jump 100m, Max jump 1500m)
300% efficiency would be +/- 750m range (Min jump 50m, Max jump 1550m)
350% efficiency would be +/- 775m range (Min jump 25m, Max jump 1575m)
400% efficiency would be +/- 788m range (Min jump 13m, Max jump 1587m)

Hard vs Soft limit
I think I'd favour a hard limit on these ranges, simply because it would be easier to use in practice without worrying about going under or over your range limit and causing damage. But I can understand the argument for a soft limit that would limit the extremes of some kiters if soft limits were used, I'd still set the min max range as 0/2x standard with damage approaching 100% the closer a ship gets to these, whatever its base ability.

Velocity after blink
One other thing I'd include is a limit to velocity after using a blink. Again this can be argued a limit introduced by the hardwired blink process. Again this would stop the extremes of kiters, but it would also make add a balance to blink/engines, a kiter with high-efficiency blink may still be vulnerable to very fast ships and vicer versa. It would also put a limit to the extremes of fast attack ships, so you've got the options of blink vs manoeuvrability vs speed, rather than making blink ships automatically better than fast or manoeuvrable ships. Finally, limiting post-blink velocity will stop ramming exploits. Without a blink velocity limit, it will be easy to make a fast ship that blinks past weapons range to ram ships. A ship may not ram an opponent when it blinks, but if it keeps its velocity it will be easy to aim a rammer at targets and blink in just next to them.
I can see this as being something of an exploit.

Apologies for the info dump. This is a realy cool topic that just got me thinking.

Dibs

Personal opinion for me is that there should be a hard limit on range for a hop rather then a soft limit that with increasing damage. I'd also prefer a ships facing to be important. I'd probably have a slide bar to set your distance (up to your ships/fleets cohesive) maximum then a press button to activate the hop in a straight line from the ships facing

Walt

Dibs Personal opinion for me is that there should be a hard limit on range for a hop rather then a soft limit that with increasing damage.

Can you elaborate on why this is?

(I've updated the original post to say that the game will tell you the percent power loss and damage taken that will occur before you jump.)

Dibs I'd also prefer a ships facing to be important.

I forgot to mention in the original post that when hopping your ships orientation will not change, so you'll have to plan accordingly. (The original post has been updated to mention this.)

Equalizer Wondering how you will handle collisions with jumping.

E.g. If a ship has an open space in the middle of it could a small ship jump inside it?

Probably I'll just forbid jumping if their circles are within a certain distance of each other.

Equalizer

Wondering how you will handle collisions with jumping.

E.g. If a ship has an open space in the middle of it could a small ship jump inside it?

Lafiel

Continuously draining power is good but it's gonna be really troublesome. Would it be possible to have a grace period of say a few seconds? I'm also thinking of how capacitors lose inverse exponentially power but I suppose that would be too much.

I think distances should scale with number of FTL parts in relation to ship mass basically the same as efficiency. After all you have more warp power at your disposal.

I think using white above 100% is perfectly fine, though.

Walt

Lafiel Continuously draining power is good but it's gonna be really troublesome. Would it be possible to have a grace period of say a few seconds?

Yeah, so my thinking is that, say, if an FTL Drive takes 12000 power to charge up, then it'll lose 1000 power/second but won't turn back off until it goes below about 9000 power, so there's a few seconds of grace period.

Lafiel I think distances should scale with number of FTL parts in relation to ship mass basically the same as efficiency.

It basically already does, right? Since a larger ship will have lower efficiency unless it also has more FTL drives to compensate.

jbox1 How about the whole “low efficiencies cause damage on long range jumps” thing?

Yes, a low efficiency will make the distance at which you start taking damage much shorter.

jbox1 Also, should long range jumps take longer to charge than short range jumps?

Because in this proposal the FTL drive charges up before making setting a jump destination, there's not really a way to enforce this. I suppose shorter jumps could be made when the drives are only partially powered, but that might be confusing.

For galaxy map jumps, yes definitely, the amount of power/fuel used should depend on distance.

Dibs QoL mostly, means you aren't forced to make a risk vs reward jump if your trying to prevent a ring out by rod.

This sounds like a point in favor of damage to me. 🙂

Dibs Also ,will hopping kill momentum?

Momentum will likely be preserved when jumping. That just creates more possibilities for emergent gameplay.

Dibs And will engine rooms have any bearing on FTL strengths?

I hadn't thought about this, but probably not.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Do your reactors just bottom out and have to recharge? Or do they shut down and produce no power for a while?

They probably just bottom out, if anything.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Does it strip batteries from parts such as shields/weapons/thrusters, which have to be replaced?

Yes.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi As for the damage, is it on every part of the ship, like a certain value of damage applied to every part?

Yes, probably as a percentage of remaining health, though possibly with some randomness added. (But probably never enough to destroy anything.)

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Or is the damage maybe just localized around the FTL drives, like an explosion? Parts closer to the FTL drive are more damaged? Or maybe parts FURTHER from the FTL drive are more damaged, sort of an inverted explosion?

Possibly parts that are further away get damaged first? Not sure, that's more complicated, but it could be cool.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Could the damage actually destroy your FTL drive parts? If so, would they detonate like a reactor?

Hmm, interesting thought. Not sure. Could be weird if the damage is inverted as above.

Dibs

Walt QoL mostly, means you aren't forced to make a risk vs reward jump if your trying to prevent a ring out by rod.

Also ,will hopping kill momentum? And will engine rooms have any bearing on FTL strengths?

yobeefjerky

Walt Probably I'll just forbid jumping if their circles are within a certain distance of each other.

To go with the idea of damage, the ships, if they overlap, will damage eachother, the jumper will take severe damage where the ship that was struck takes less. This means FTL ramming is a last-ditch plan that will likely destroy the ship perfoming the ram.

This wouldn't be using the circles because you could very easily disallow jumps by just being large yet thin.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Walt

Walt Dibs Personal opinion for me is that there should be a hard limit on range for a hop rather then a soft limit that with increasing damage.

Can you elaborate on why this is?

(I've updated the original post to say that the game will tell you the percent power loss and damage taken that will occur before you jump.)

While I don't necessarily agree with Dibs, I think that a more simplified hard limit might be more fun or less stressful to use. Blinking should be fun, not a hard choice where you have to weigh the pros/cons before you execute. It would probably also be way easier to implement than a complex soft limit. 😃

On the other hand I do like the player skill factor involved in knowing your hop range limits and executing properly. Maybe reduce the penalties for bad hops? Only power loss and fires, not instant part damage.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Walt I forgot to mention in the original post that when hopping your ships orientation will not change, so you'll have to plan accordingly. (The original post has been updated to mention this.)

I love this. If you want to be facing the enemy when you blink behind them, you'll have to show them your own ass for a moment. This could also lead to some cool Top Gun scenarios where you act like you're running, then blink behind them and get on their tail.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

I like the whole 'number of FTL drives = better at hopping' thing. That ensures that hop ships will need to devote significant part volume and credits to FTL drives to be good at it.

I also like that there are risks to hopping and that it will require a bit of player knowledge and skill to make smart hops. However, what do mean by 'ship loses power' and 'ship takes damage'?

•Do your reactors just bottom out and have to recharge? Or do they shut down and produce no power for a while?
•Does it strip batteries from parts such as shields/weapons/thrusters, which have to be replaced?
•As for the damage, is it on every part of the ship, like a certain value of damage applied to every part?
•Or is the damage maybe just localized around the FTL drives, like an explosion? Parts closer to the FTL drive are more damaged? Or maybe parts FURTHER from the FTL drive are more damaged, sort of an inverted explosion?
•Could the damage actually destroy your FTL drive parts? If so, would they detonate like a reactor?

Overall it seems like you took it in a smart direction, as usual (I love what you did with railguns).

Walt

yobeefjerky To go with the idea of damage, the ships, if they overlap, will damage eachother, the jumper will take severe damage where the ship that was struck takes less. This means FTL ramming is a last-ditch plan that will likely destroy the ship perfoming the ram.

I think FTL ramming is probably not something I want to allow, for balance reasons. (Not to mention I have no idea how to actually code that.)

Tobi-wan_Kenobi While I don't necessarily agree with Dibs, I think that a more simplified hard limit might be more fun or less stressful to use. Blinking should be fun, not a hard choice where you have to weigh the pros/cons before you execute. It would probably also be way easier to implement than a complex soft limit. 😃

On the other hand I do like the player skill factor involved in knowing your hop range limits and executing properly. Maybe reduce the penalties for bad jumps? Only power loss and fires, not instant part damage.

To be clear, ships with high FTL efficiency will be able to jump fairly long distances with no negative side effects (or at least no damage). And the game will make it crystal-clear to you how much damage you'll take, so no guesswork involved.

Dibs

Walt fair enough then 😛

Con 2 for damage: in-efficient ships will either slow down a fleet hop or die in the attempt.

Con 3: It punishes the weaker ship and newer players in an engagement. If a weaker ship is trying to escape it's likely attempt a full jump. If it has already suffered damage this will punish them for it. This puts the skill ceiling higher for the game (yes, a good thing!) but without a current mechanic to seperate skilled players from the new, it would currently a bad thing.

yobeefjerky

Walt I think FTL ramming is probably not something I want to allow, for balance reasons. (Not to mention I have no idea how to actually code that.)

It would be more like, if ship A jumps and overlaps ship B, all overlapping blocks are destroyed and all blocks within the circles of ships A and B take X amount of damage. X being calculated from distance jumped and how much the circles overlap, or something to that effect.

Dalas120

Walt I worry that instantly activated blink favors kiting too strongly, and lacks effective counterplay (other than having your own blink-optimized ship).

Recent kiters have spent lots of money on omnidirectional thrust, because the ability to strafe effectively is key to avoiding your opponent and the ring. Non-kiters don't benefit nearly as much from lateral thrust. Blinking works omnidirectionally, and IMO will thus be inherently stronger on kiters than most other ship types. Kiters are usually also quite small, which makes it easier to get high FTL efficiency. These issues I think are inherent to all types of blink, and wouldn't be helped much by charge time/cast time.

But I do think that charge time/cast time would help a lot with other kiting issues. With instant blink, as a kiter approaches the ring it can pre-charge FTL, then activate blink at the perfect moment to avoid the ring and buy breathing room to reposition. But the antikiter can't anticipate and react to the kiter's blink - because then the kiter will just cancel the FTL and not teleport at all. Even if I bring a blink-optimized ship and blink into the kiter, the kiter will have their dedicated FTLs charged and can blink away instantly, and will have their drives recharged before I do. So the only way for a single ship to catch an instant blinking kiter would be to force it to blink first, then blink directly on top of it before it can accelerate away.

On the other hand, with charge time/cast time blink the antikiter is at less of a disadvantage. First off, perfect kiting will be much harder when you have to plan for a variable charge time/cast time, instead of preparing FTL beforehand and activating it on demand. Also, once the kiter activates FTL the antikiter has additional options - either damage the kiter before it blinks, or camp the blink exit point (which cannot be canceled by the kiter). While a kiter with instant blink can always teleport somewhere the antikiter isn't, a kiter with charge time/cast time blink is vulnerable in both locations (and has to keep both locations out of the ring).

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.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Idea: maybe tractor beams could prohibit blink drive use.

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.

Walt I think FTL ramming is probably not something I want to allow, for balance reasons. (Not to mention I have no idea how to actually code that.)

Personally, I think that blink ramming should definitely be a thing if it's codeable. Not really for balance, but because it exists in the majority of science fiction universes, and because it would allow for some really creative uses of blink (like blinking into/out of an enclosed shipyard). While it would take some serious forethought to not be OP, I think it's definitely balanceable.

FireShredder24

Walt

I think FTL ramming is probably not something I want to allow, for balance reasons. (Not to mention I have no idea how to actually code that.)

You don't really have to. People could just design a ship with four exposed reactors on the front, blink right up against the enemy, and detonate an Explosive Charge(or four) to cause collateral damage to the enemy ship.

Also, would it be possible to turn some FTL drives that are fully fueled off, so they are not drained when you blink, then activate them and blink back out again?

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

yobeefjerky It would be more like, if ship A jumps and overlaps ship B, all overlapping blocks are destroyed and all blocks within the circles of ships A and B take X amount of damage. X being calculated from distance jumped and how much the circles overlap, or something to that effect.

Yeah I totally disagree with allowing FTL 'ramming.' For the express reason that it would be uncounterable. And just OP as hell.

Walt Idea: maybe tractor beams could prohibit blink drive use.

nop

Hopefully ships keep their inertia through the blink jump?

This should be interesting! I can imagine having a pack of ships, each with FTL, that can blink away whenever they are focused.

Walt

nop Hopefully ships keep their inertia through the blink jump?

This is the plan.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi If the FTLs are charged up for a hop, and you make a shorter hop, much shorter than your penalty threshold range, could the FTLs retain some of their charge (keep some batteries in the slots) instead of removing it all, thus allowing a quicker charge time for the next hop? This could allow a highly efficient ship with a full charge to make a series of relatively quick blinks before the FTLs bottom out.

This sounds basically reasonable to me, though some care will have to be made to make sure you can't spam-hop to dodge shots over and over again. The drive would probably lose a minimum amount of power regardless of distance, and would always need to be filled back up to max before hopping again.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

If the FTLs are charged up for a hop, and you make a shorter hop, much shorter than your penalty threshold range, could the FTLs retain some of their charge (keep some batteries in the slots) instead of removing it all, thus allowing a quicker charge time for the next hop? This could allow a highly efficient ship with a full charge to make a series of relatively quick blinks before the FTLs bottom out.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Walt This sounds basically reasonable to me, though some care will have to be made to make sure you can't spam-hop to dodge shots over and over again. The drive would probably lose a minimum amount of power regardless of distance,

Yeah, the balance would have to be tuned so that if a ship is going to be able to do a lot of blinks quickly (say one hop every five seconds) it would have to be really devoted to the design, i.e. many FTLs, well-placed, with dedicated reactors, etc.

Walt and would always need to be filled back up to max before hopping again.

Naturally. I meant only that the crew could produce the next maxed charge sooner, with less batteries to move.

yobeefjerky

Tobi-wan_Kenobi
As I think of it, yeah, it's really OP.

Walt

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Idea: maybe tractor beams could prohibit blink drive use.

Hmm, interesting, tractor beams as FTL inhibitor. (FTL inhibitor could also potentially be a separate part, though allowing tractor beams to do it is clever.) Maybe tractor beams don't disallow jumps outright, but they significantly decrease the effective range. (You can jump out of the tractor beam, but you'll take damage doing so.)